


A Second Chance

by FireSoul



Series: Hell or High-Water [2]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Sequel, season 1 rewrite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-09-05
Packaged: 2019-05-12 23:33:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 57,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14737904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: “I’ll come back to you,” she had said, "I promise."She kept her promise.Six years after The Amazo, Leonard Snart has found himself recruited for a mission through time, along with the woman he thought he lost. But six years is a long time, and she's changed. That doesn't matter, of course, he still loves her and he'll be damned if he's going to lose her again. As for Sara, well, all she wants is to find a way to move forward with her life. She's been on this dark path for so long she isn't sure if she can get off it. But, maybe the beginning is a good place to start.Sequel to "A Walk Through Hell"





	1. After All These Years

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! So this is a sequel, therefor I highly recommend reading "A Walk Through Hell" first. Important things from that story to note is that Leonard and Sara met on The Amazo where Len taught her how to fight, among other things. Also, he lost his right leg in that story, so he has a prosthetic here! That's going to come up a few times! Hope you guys enjoy this!

The time machine is… interesting.

Honestly, Sara isn’t sure how she ever could’ve expected it wouldn’t be.

It was never in question that she was going to get on this ship, not once. When she woke up on that rooftop last night and Rip told them about the future she couldn’t walk away. She isn’t a hero, doesn’t understand how on earth she could be considered a legend 150 years from now when she is quite literally dead to the world already, her memory nothing more than an interesting missing persons file. But maybe this could help her find her way to that path; Laurel seems to agree with that. Besides, who wouldn’t want to get on a time machine? She’s been a lot of places in her life, but this is a whole new type of adventure, and some tiny piece of innocence still clinging to life somewhere inside her is intrigued. On paper, this mission is exactly what she needs. There’s only one problem:

Leonard Snart.

When she saw him on the rooftop her whole world froze. Sure, all these years a part of her knew there was a chance he was still alive, she had hoped as much. But, as the years went on that hope and his memory were both pushed to the back of her mind. If he taught her one thing on The Amazo it was to focus only on the moment, looking too much into the past or the future was a good way to ensure your own death.

This is different. She was given a choice here; she _wants_ to be here. She wants to nurture that tiny spark of innocence left inside her, see if it’s still alive enough to grow.

But a constant reminder of her past, the man who taught her how to be heartless in the first place? That’s going to make this whole finding herself thing a lot more difficult.

He seems like he’s still interested, considering he waited to get her alone last night and then all but promised he would go on this mission if she did. Not to mention the fact that she’s just left his side after he asked her to catch him up on her life. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to catch up with him; it’s just that she gave up a long time ago on the hope of ever seeing him again. His gangrene was bad, looking at it logically the chances that he survived were very slim and by the time she was in a position in which she could have gone looking for him she figured it would be best she didn’t. If he had died then she would only be causing herself more pain, but if she found him alive she never would have approached him. She isn’t the helpless little girl he met on The Amazo, nor is she the thug he trained her to be. She is far, far worse now.

Her eyes fall on him, for a brief second, as he enters onto the bridge of the ship behind her, leaning himself against a metallic chair with a bored look on his face. The sight pulls at her heart, a part of her yearning to walk the two steps it would take to reach him and promise to tell him everything as soon as they’re alone. But she doesn’t, and instead a holographic head, which Rip refers to as “Gideon”, appears over the table in the center of the room.

Gideon announces that they’re going to St. Roche 1975, in search of an expert on Vandal Savage, and Rip instructs them all to pick a chair and strap in.

The chairs are in sets of two, and Sara goes for the one conjoined to Oliver’s friend Ray Palmer, yet she still somehow ends up more or less next to Leonard over in the next set. He’s looking at her, so she flashes him a smile.

No turning back now.

* * *

 

When they land in 1975,or maybe the afterlife considering Hunter’s piloting, Len has a headache. It isn’t terrible, he’s felt worse, and it isn’t like they weren’t warned there might be a few side effects to time travel.

Case in point; Mick just threw up, Iron Man is on the floor, and The Professor is claiming blindness.

“You three,” Hunter says, gesturing to himself, Mick, and Sara, “Feel free to make yourselves comfortable here on the ship.” He spins to face everyone else, “The rest of you are coming with me to find Professor Boardman.”

“Whoa, whoa, Whoa.” Mick says, forcing himself to sit up. “You’re benching us?”

“I thought we were a team?” Now Sara is in on the argument, an offense in her tone that Len is positive he has never heard before.

“This mission doesn’t require your particular skillset, yet.” Hunter explains, not that Len is going to count it as a valid explanation.

“Meaning you don’t need anyone tortured, maimed, or robbed?” He drawls and it isn’t really a question, but it is a statement he reconsiders when Sara looks over her shoulder at him with a harsh and disbelieving glare. He shrugs, not sure how else he can respond, not since she’s made it clear that he doesn’t know her anymore.

Within five minutes it’s just the four of them on the ship; himself, Mick, Sara, and the poor kid who never asked to be here. It’s awkward for a few minutes, Sara very actively avoiding his gaze for all of ten seconds before she nearly growls restlessly.

“I’m going to take a walk around this tin can,” she announces, flashing him a look that screams _“Do not follow me,”_ before he’s even had a chance to consider the idea.

Mick eventually figures out that one of the screens imbedded in the wall can function as a TV, though he keeps flipping through the five channels, frustrated by something.

The kid is pacing around, complaining, trying to convince the computer to send him back to 2016, and the computer is not complying. If this is any indication of how this job is going to run then Leonard isn’t impressed.

 

* * *

 

Sara walks around the twists and turns of The Waverider partially curious, partially trying to get lost in her own world. She finds a kitchen, a few storage areas, and a surplus of empty rooms. Rip had said that this ship doesn’t require a crew, but that aside there certainly is enough space for one. A few of the empty rooms have beds, some one and some two. These are probably going to be the rooms that they’ll be sleeping in over the course of this mission, and suddenly Sara feels like an idiot for not bringing any change of clothes.

Well, that isn’t entirely true.

She did bring one change of clothes, gifted to her by her sister and Cisco. It isn’t exactly inconspicuous, but from what she knows about 1970’s fashion it shouldn’t raise too many eyebrows here, and suddenly the fact that she has found herself on a time ship with someone who might have been her… well she has no idea, actually. There was something between her and Leonard six years ago, but they were separated by an explosion before ever getting a chance to discover it. Now though, now they’re both here. They’re here, alive, and not in any immediate danger. That tiny little spark of innocence buried deep under the rubble inside her is suddenly screaming at her, begging her to at least talk to Leonard, to at least see if there is still even a glimpse of something there.

So she wanders back to the bridge, partially lost, before she can lose all her nerve.

When she arrives the man who had shown up with Len, the man she can only assume is Mick, is complaining about the TV stations only playing reruns. The kid who was drugged looks absolutely miserable, and Leonard just looks bored.

“Am I the only one on this ship who could really use a drink?” Her question announces her return, and Leonard spins himself to face her with an eyebrow raised, something she matches.

After all these years, they can still read each other.

“Excellent idea,” he responds, nearly grinning, and she can’t help but to smirk in amusement.

“I got the perfect outfit.”

 

* * *

 

Well, she certainly wasn’t lying.

He and Mick spend roughly five minutes waiting by the ramp of the ship while Sara changes, and they don’t say much. There are things they need to discus, but not now. Not when Sara could walk in at any moment and not when Mick is so restless. A drink is a good idea for all thee of them.

“Ok,” Sara says when she returns, and Len is still getting used to hearing her voice again, so he blames it on that when he straightens a little more than maybe he should at the sight of her coming through the doorway.

She’s dressed from head to toe in white leather, the material highlighting every curve of her petite body. It’s a suit, he realizes, like Barry’s.  That realization is somehow a punch to the gut, because it looks a little _too_ much like Barry’s for him to be comfortable. Not in color, obviously, or even in design. But something about the way it fits her just right, almost like a second skin, he had figured that for her to be brought onto the mission she had to have some ties to some hero but that suit looks like Cisco’s work. It makes him wonder; all this time he’s thought her dead… how close was she?

It doesn’t matter. She’s here now.

It doesn’t take them long to find a bar, and Mick is more than pleased to find that $1.00 beers are still in popularity here. He goes up to the counter, retrieves three beers, and then distributes them. Once that’s done he heads over to the jukebox to look for some Captain and Tennille, strategically leaving Leonard alone with Sara.

Len smirks to himself, people can say what they like about Mick but he certainly is a lot smarter than is often credited.

The fact that he chooses “Love Will Keep Us Together”, of all things, has Len looking to Sara with knowing and apologetic expression that she matches; at least she realizes what Mick is up to as well.

“You want to dance, Leonard?” She asks, he’s been trying to follow her lead thus far, gauging her expressions ever since they left the present to determine what she wants. She didn’t want him to explore the ship with her, so he stayed where he was. She did want him to come looking for a bar with her, provided he brought Mick along as well, so he did. But now he isn’t sure if she wants him to deny or accept this offer.

It might actually be up to him, and much as he wants to get her alone to talk dancing, for him at least, just seems a little too… intimate right now.

“You go right ahead, I’ll watch.” She smirks, so at least he knows he hasn’t disappointed her, and then she hands him her beer.

“Suit yourself,” she calls over her shoulder as she steps out into the center of the floor.

Make no mistakes, this dive isn’t that kind of bar. Sure, it has the jukebox, but the floor isn’t exactly set up for dancing. That doesn’t stop Sara, Len notes as he sips his beer. She lets the music take control of her, lost in her own world, and that’s when a burly man much bigger than she is taps her on the shoulder.

Len’s eyes narrow, his mind momentarily transported back to a prison ship and a poor sucker who slapped this very same woman on the ass while waiting for his nightly ration, and received a broken wrist for his efforts.

“Can I help you?” She asks the man, her voice irritated.

“How about you join me in the parking lot?”

“Ooo, tempting.” Sara replies with false interest. “But you’re not my type.” Her gaze and smile flits over to the bar now, where the man had come from and another woman is sitting, and Len follows the path with his own eyes. “But your lady, on the other hand… well she looks just my speed.”

Well, Len thinks to himself with a slight smirk, that’s certainly new.

His eyes narrow in on Sara again, however, when the man calls her a bitch and seizes her wrist. He doesn’t make a move.

He wants to, after all this time believing her dead he wants to, but he doesn’t.

She breaks his wrist even more expertly, and far more easily, than she broke Theodor’s, using a move that he knows he didn’t teach her.

As the man staggers back cursing she glances over her shoulder, a confident smile on her face as she assures Len that she can handle this.

He nods, the man smashes a glass bottle, and she takes down him along with five more. She fights with a grace he could never hope to learn, almost dancing her way through the brawl. There is a story behind those moves, one that he has every intention of learning, but for now she’s calling him and Mick to give her a hand.

 

* * *

 

The bar fight is fun.

It’s just what Sara needs, if that makes any sense. It’s a little bit of release, a little bit of distraction, and a little bit of trouble.  She likes the feeling of having Leonard right there to back her up, too; it’s something she’s missed the past six years. When they inevitably get kicked out of the bar they’re all laughing like teenagers, a feeling that remains while they steal a car and speed back to The Waverider after receiving a call from Rip that there’s a fight going on.

Turns out, fight is an understatement.

When they arrive there is a full out battle happening, complete with a spaceman holding a very big gun.

That big gun turns out to be very big problem.

Professor Stein and Jax join the fray as one combined burning man, and Ray follows in his suit, but it isn’t enough. Boardman gets hurt, they all run for the refuge of the ship, and then once they’re in what Rip calls the temporal zone the truth comes out.

He lied.

He isn’t a Time Master. He was, supposedly, at one point. But he was fired after he stole The Waverider. Turns out he did have his reasons; at least, not that it really makes much of a difference. Apparently they aren’t Legends in the future either, but rather they’re the opposite. Time forgets them, they’re nobodies.

They all break off to various spaces throughout the ship to talk over their options now that they know the truth, and Sara finds herself sitting in a cargo hold with Leonard, Mick, and Ray.

She sits herself down on a crate at one side of the doorway, Leonard doing the same on the other side. She nods at him, to tell him she understands. After the bar and the fight she’s ready to talk, but not here. Not in front of Mick and Ray. The four of them should be talking over their options, but instead the room is silent. The boys eventually start tinkering with their various weapons, and so Sara partially watches them while the other part of her mind is lost in thought.

Personally, she’s planning on staying. The mission to stop Savage wasn’t a lie and that was only part of Rip’s offer she actually cared about. She couldn’t care less whether history remembers or forgets her, though it would be nice to go down as a Legend. When he said that was her destiny, it gave her hope. She has spent the past year so lost, wandering aimlessly around the world trying to figure out what she should do with herself, if there’s even anything she can do with herself now that she has this bloodlust inside her. For this man to have traveled from the future and hunted her down, telling her that in his time she is regarded as a Legend, it gave her hope. Now that she knows he lied… well, on the bright side not going down in history at all at least means she doesn’t let the bloodlust turn her into a mass murderer.

Then there’s the mission-

“Watch it!” Mick’s furious snarl, following the fire of Ray’s blaster, interrupts her thoughts.

“Sorry,” Ray apologizes, looking as surprised as the rest of them. “Sorry.” They’re quiet for another few seconds, but it’s too late. The silence has already been broken.

“What’s the point of us even giving this a second thought?” Ray goes on, “Rip has already seen the future. He knows exactly what’s in store for each of us.” He stops for a second and looks over at her. “You’re just a lost assassin.” He reminds her and he moves on to call Mick and Leonard “good for nothing criminals” but Sara sees Leonard’s glance to her once his attention is diverted.

She nods, she’ll tell him later, and he accepts that.

“Then some guy comes along and tells me that being the A.T.O.M. is as insignificant as an actual atom.”

Ok, this is getting depressing.

“That’s not what he said,” she tells Ray, getting to her feet. “Rip said that in his future, we’re nobodies. But this mission is about changing the future. And if we have the power to change the world, don’t you think we have the power to change our own fate?”

Ray and Mick seem to consider her words, but Len just smirks at her.

“For better or for worse,” he says and his smirk actually grows, “Assassin.”


	2. The Girl I Once Knew

By the time they get to it, their talk is long overdue.

Its after Aldus dies, after the first shot at the mission. After Carter dies, after Kendra’s wounded. After more loss than they should have experienced at this point in the mission.

A part of Sara thinks that because of all this now might not be the best time for this conversation, while another part of her insists that all of this is exactly why now is the time. Reasoning that Aldus just died, and ok, he was supposed to. But Carter wasn’t. Carter went in to kill Savage, and he was the one who came out dead. It hasn’t even been a day and they’ve already lost a teammate.

She finds Leonard alone in one of the furthest cargo holds of the ship, a game of solitaire spread out before him. She smirks to herself, watching him flip through the cards and restart the pile twice. He’s already lost, she figures, but at this point he knows she’s watching.

“We need to talk.”

He smirks, a close-to-genuine laugh, and it makes her smile just a bit.

“Normally that’s a sentence no person ever wants to hear,” he says, finally looking up at her. “But there’s an exception to every rule.”

That’s her cue.

Unsticking herself from the doorway she moves and sits across from him while he starts gathering up his cards, shuffling the pile probably more than he needs after losing a game of solitaire, but she’s never been one to question his methods.

He starts dealing, laying cards back and forth between them until they’re all dealt out for a game of war.

They play a few turns in silence, rediscovering a familiar rhythm long engrained into both their muscle memories.

“So…” Leonard drawls, “Assassin?”

Sara purses her lips, flipping over her next card and collecting the winnings from the turn.

“Like you said Leonard,” she muses, “It’s been awhile.”

He hums in agreement, nodding. They play a few more turns, and he doesn’t press for an answer. She’s grateful for that and almost considers not explaining, but even if he isn’t pressuring her she knows that he does want an explanation.

“After The Amazo went down I washed up on the other side of the island, then everything went black.” He tilts his head, considering her. “When I woke up I was in some kind of temple, in a place called Nanda Parbat. Apparently there had been a group of assassins passing through the waters by the island, they saw the ship go down and hunted for survivors. They found me.”

“Something tells me they didn’t give you a ride home,” he drawls and that actually gets Sara to snicker, just a little, just enough to make her feel like some semblance of her old self.

“They trained me,” she confesses, “I became one of them.” She flits her eyes up to his, a pit of unease pooling in her stomach, “And I was good at it.”

This is just the start of her confession, just the beginning of everything that’s happened to her over the past six years. There is so much more to her story, so much more she has to tell him. The Canary, her death, the bloodlust, but it all starts with The League.

 

* * *

 

She’s waiting for him to react. She wants him to say something, anything, but he’s at a loss. He knows she’s changed, she’s made that clear, but the idea of her being good at something so horrible… he wants to say he can’t picture it.

But he can.

He remembers the first time she tortured, and how she never showed any signs of cracking. She didn’t beg Ivo for mercy, didn’t show the man mercy either. She knew she wouldn’t survive by doing any of that. So she carved that man up like a Christmas ham until he gave up what he knew. She was always a quick learner, no matter how dark the deed she was asked to do. She’s a survivor, one of the most dangerous kinds at that: one who is willing to make compromises.

He opens his mouth to say something, but a shout cuts him off.

“Snart?” Its Mick, his voice echoing from somewhere down the hall. “Where are ya?”

Sara smirks at the interruption, or maybe it’s the look of pure exasperation of his face. He’s starting to get the feeling that any alone time on this ship might actually turn out to be harder to come by than it was on The Amazo.

“Be there in a second, Mick.” He calls, then his eyes settle back on Sara. “Finish this later?”

She nods, just in time for Mick to arrive in the doorway.

“There you two are,” he grumbles, “The Englishman’s had enough time to sulk, everyone’s going to see what the plan is.” He explains, waving his arm in a _“follow me”_ motion.

 

* * *

 

The plan is the same as it was before, defeat Savage and become Legends. But it’s proving to be a whole lot easier said than done.

You see; the _plan_ is to defeat Vandal Savage and change their own courses in history in the process so that their lives actually go down meaning something. But the _reality_ is that Kendra was stabbed in the side with a 10,000-year-old dagger that, needless to say, wasn’t exactly in the best condition. A few pieces chipped off the blade and are currently floating through her bloodstream and towards her heart. She won’t survive a time jump in that condition; therefor they’re stuck in 1975 until they come up with a solution. The only bright side is they have a fairly decent idea as to how to track Savage here but, given that they couldn’t time jump, they’ve lost the element of surprise in this time, so it isn’t much of a bright side.

Of course, Leonard has found his own bright side.

While they’re sitting ducks Rip has decided to take Sara with him on a little assignment to a bank, while The Professor and Raymond play operation with Kendra Jax is repairing the jump ship, leaving Mick and himself unsupervised by anyone but each other.

Perfect.

He picks Rip’s pocket before the ever unqualified Captain and Sara leave for the bank, though he spends the better portion of the afternoon debating if he’s actually going to go through with his borderline crazy idea. He doesn’t need Rip to tell him that time is a delicate thing. Glancing down at his leg, even covered by his jeans, he can’t help but wonder if it will still be made of metal if he succeeds in this, or even if he’ll still be alive. There are a lot of risks to this, so many that he’s almost considering not going through with it.

That is, until Sara marches past him.

“Back so soon?” He calls after her, but he drops all pretense of casualness when she rounds on him to reveal her red eyes and quivering lip. “What happened?” He demands, voice icy and eyes narrowed to mere slits.

“Not now Snart.” She practically cries, looking so much like the terrified kid that was pulled from the North China Sea, and yet nothing like her at all. “Just… Not now.”

_“That’s it,”_ he thinks to himself as she stalks away, the sound of her footsteps echoing off the floor as she moves for her quarters. His decision has been made; he’s doing this.

Mick is eager to go, thankfully, already board with being stuck on this tin can.

“What are we going after Boss?” He asks as they head down the hall, and Len sighs, he and Mick have been partners for close to thirty years, but even after all this time there are some reactions which Leonard just can’t predict.

Or rather, he doesn’t want to predict.

“Tell you when we get there,” he says, and Mick falls a step behind, like he already suspects that he isn’t going to like this. But he keeps following, so Len keeps moving.

The door to the jump ship is already open when they get there, the kid already in the pilot’s seat.

“Ha! Nice ride!” Mick cheers in approval as soon as he steps on, and Jax is grinning in agreement. Maybe this will go better than expected.

“Yeah, it can hit a Mach three in a walk!” Jax gloats, “Pretty cool.”

“How’d you know so much about it?” Len is curious, because the kid didn’t exactly sound confident two hours ago when Rip first asked him to fix the jump ship.

“Little thing called an instruction manual.”

Ah, that makes sense. Oh well, moving on.

“Did you read the part about flying this thing?” He asks, sitting himself down with a smirk while Mick does the same.

“Maybe…” Jax trails, “Why?”

“We’re gonna take a little sojourn to Star City, or Starling City, as it was known in 2007. There’s a priceless jewel that needs to be freed from captivity.” He sees Mick looking at him, because he’s just figured out what they’re really doing, and it isn’t a jewel heist. But he doesn’t say anything, so Len will take that.

“You want me to help you steal something?” Jax demands, completely repulsed. Mick makes that judgmental rumbling sound at the back of his throat, so Len glances up at him, but the other man still remains quiet, so he turns his attention back to Jax.

“Nah man, I’ll pass.” The kid rejects and turns back to his instruction manual, looks like they’re going to do this the hard way.

“Not exactly asking, Jax.” He says, a warning, which the kid must understand at least.

“Wow. Carter is dead, Kendra is close to joining him, and Vandal Savage is still alive and out there doing God knows what. And all you can think about is stealing some diamonds?” Leonard has to admit, the kid has a good heart; the guilt trip might actually get through a piece of him if he were actually going after a diamond.

“It’s an emerald,” he says, mostly just to watch the expression of sheer disappointment cross Jax’s face, and it’s totally worth it.

“Is there anything you think about other than yourself?”

Ouch, maybe he should come clean.

“Yes. Money.” He says, because he can’t actually be sure if Jax would go along with this if he knew the truth.

“Nah.” Jax declares, getting up, “I’m not helping you guys steal anything.” Yup, definitely doing this the hard way. “So if you want to shoot me, then shoot me.”

Mick springs up, of course, and Len gets up as well and holds out a hand to hold off his partner.

“Can I shoot him?” His friend still eagerly asks, even though Len knows he’s being clear about the answer.

“You’ve got a pair on you, kid. I respect that.”

“So no shooting…” he cocks his head to the side to call Mick off, and the other man goes and reclaims his seat.

“Look, you don’t actually have to help us steal anything. We just need a ride. We’ll be there and back before anyone even knows we’re gone.” Jax doesn’t look like he approves of this any more than he did two minutes ago, but he does look considerably more intrigued.

“Man, even if I wanted to help, and I’m not saying that I do, this things got a security lockout. We need an access key.”

Len knows that, and produces the object from his pocket right on cue.

“You can’t tell me you don’t want to see what this baby can do.” He’s close; Jax just needs that last little bit of promise to tip his curiosity, and the key does just the trick.

 

* * *

 

When they land Jax, still geeking out over how well the jump ship flies, stays parked and cloaked in a vacant lot not too far from the docks.

“So what’s your plan?” Mick asks as soon as they get off the jump ship and close the hatch behind them.

“We’re not going to kidnap her if that’s what you’re asking.”

“So what?” Mick huffs, “You going to tell her about the future.”

“Of course not,” Len answers, rolling his eyes. “We’ve both seen enough movies to know that never works.”

“Well what then?” Mick growls the demand, clearly growing impatient.

“Simple, since we don’t know where she lives, but she did once tell me where her mother works, I’m going to pay her a visit and you’re going to wait here in case that doesn’t work.”

Mick, while normally apt to go along with anything, scoffs at the idea. “You’re gonna tell her mom on her?” He demands, “That’s your plan?”

“Sometimes the obvious plan is the way to go.”

* * *

 

She isn’t supposed to be home.

It’s the first weekend of the school year; she’s supposed to be settling into her dorm room or going to a party or something like that. That was her plan, more or less, until Oliver texted her. He wants her to go with him on The Gambit, he wants her over Laurel. She thought she already lost her chance with him, but maybe not. Hastily zipping up her bag she checks her appearance in the mirror one last time and decides to wear her Starling City Rockets hat after all. Satisfied with herself Sara shoulders her bag and heads from her room, only to freeze when she reaches the bottom of the stairs and finds her mom walking in.

Crap.

“Uh…” She stutters, at a loss for how to explain herself. She isn’t supposed to be here, or anywhere near here for that matter. She had counted on everyone being at work right now, counted on none of them ever realizing she was here.

“Sara?” Her mom greets her with a smile as she sets down her bag, “What a surprise, how did you get here?”

“I uh… my friend gave a me a ride.” Well, that much is true.

“Mmhmm,” her mom hums in that tone that says she knows there is more to this. “And what’s with the backpack?”

“Um… I just got here.” She lies and her mom, as always, sees right through it.

“Really? You’re coming from upstairs, why didn’t you leave your bag in your room?”

_“Shit,”_ Sara thinks to herself, _“Busted.”_

“I… Uh… Ok, fine, you got me. I’m going on a trip, just for a few days, I swear! I’ll catch up on the schoolwork I miss; it’s not going to be much. But I can’t not go, mom! Oliver-” She cuts herself off, immediately realizing that she’s said too much, while her mom raises an eyebrow and then, of all things, smiles sweetly at her.

“Sara,” she says gently, “You don’t have to explain yourself.”

Well, this just took an unexpected turn.

“I… I don’t?”

“Of course not,” her mother practically laughs, somehow this amuses her. “You’re an adult. You have a right to do what makes you happy, follow your heart.”

She is pretty sure that her mother is trying to guilt trip her with this, but not so much that she stops herself from smiling.

“Thank mom. Um, could you maybe not tell dad and Laurel about this? They wouldn’t understand.” She’s sure that’s pushing the boundaries, but her mom nods in agreement.

“Of course.”

With that and another quick “thank you” Sara heads off, practically skipping through the city streets until she reaches the docks.

Which is when a big man with a hard grip seizes her arm.

“HEY!” She cries out as he pulls her behind a shed, covering her mouth so that she can’t scream any further protest.

“Whoa, settle down there! I ain’t gonna hurt ya.” His deep voice promises but the thing is he’s already hurting her. She struggles against him best she can but it’s no use, he’s more than twice her size.

“What the hell man?!?!” She hears another horrified voice from somewhere behind them and, before she knows it, she’s free.

She turns back and sees that the owner of the voice is a boy not much older than herself, certainly not has big and muscular as her assailant, yet he has shoved the other man back.

“Are you ok?” He asks and she nods vigorously, eyes glued to the bigger man who grabbed her, and is now running behind the corner of the shed.

The boy looks back just in time to see this, and he groans. “Sorry about him,” he says before running off in the same direction as the man.

 

* * *

 

Leonard is fuming by the time they get back.

Jax wasn’t supposed to move the jump ship; he wasn’t supposed to see what they were really up to. Then again, Mick wasn’t supposed to be so rough, all he needed to do was cause a distraction or something of the sorts. Len honestly isn’t sure which of the three of them he is the most pissed off at; Jax, Mick, or himself.

“I can’t believe you two!” Jax exclaims as they file into the ship. “I knew you were lowlifes, but that’s just evil! Why’d you make me bring you back in time just to assault some girl anyway?”

“We weren’t assaulting her,” Leonard assures him, even though based on the expression he gets it’s safe to say it doesn’t work. “Mick just got a little carried away.”

“You wanted to stop her,” his partner shrugs, so now Jax looks confused.

“Stop her?” He asks, “From doing what?”

“Don’t know if you noticed but that girl is on The Waverider nine years from now.”

“What?” Jax demands,

“Mick,” Leonard can’t even believe that his has to give this warning, or that Mick is ignoring him for that matter.

“That girl was Sara, before she was an assassin.”

“You…” Jax stutters,

“Mick!” Len barks again, but it’s useless, his partner isn’t listening.

“You came back… to stop Sara from becoming an assassin? Why?”

“Cause Boss has history with her,” Mick says like it’s obvious, so Len sinks into a seat in defeat. “History he wouldn’t have if this worked.”

“What-?” Jax has turned to him now, trying to ask, and therefor Leonard has found his opening to reclaim some control of the conversation.

“That’s enough questions for today, let’s just get back to the ship.”

The kid looks like he wants to argue, he really does, but he clamps his mouth shut and turns to the controls, grumbling something to himself that Leonard chooses not to hear.

During the flight back he tries to hope that maybe, just maybe, Mick managed to scare Sara off at the docks enough to send her running home instead of onto The Gambit. He stills remembers all their nights on The Amazo, all their training, their card games, the island, the prison, their first kiss and their last. Granted, according to Hunter, it takes time for time to cement changes, but this still doesn’t feel like it’s worked.

Then, as if to confirm his fears, The Professor contacts them and tells them that Rip and Sara are in trouble.

When they get there they find a cult, Savage, and Rip and Sara hopelessly outnumbered.

 

* * *

 

The battle goes… well, they don’t win. Then again, with Kendra still lain up in the med bay, winning wasn’t the goal. They do manage to all get out in one piece, and that includes Carter’s body, so it’s as close to victory as they’re going to get for today.

It’s a hollow victory, in Leonard’s opinion, but he’ll take it. It’s not like he has a choice.

He’s in his quarters thinking through this when the door opens, and he would suspect that it could only be Mick, given that they’ve elected to share this room, and he doesn’t think even Hunter would be so stupidly arrogant as to walk into his living space unannounced.

But it isn’t either of them; it’s Sara. She’s changed out of her emerald colored dress and washed off her make-up, leaving her in a pair of loose pajama pants and a dark t-shirt he can only imagine she had Gideon fabricate for her. However, her clothes are the least of his concerns, given the way her arms are crossed over her chest and her face is set in a scowl. He can only hope she doesn’t have any weapon with her.

“I’m tired,” she states, stalking forward and snarling. “So I’m only going to ask you once what the hell you thought you were doing?” He opens his mouth to respond, but she just steps closer to him, until she is nearly pressed against him. “One minute I’m sitting in the back of a car, trying to help Rip take down Savage, and the next I have a headache along with a sudden memory of Mick trying to kidnap me back when I was nineteen!” There is a fire in her eyes, and now even if Leonard wanted to answer the words aren’t coming.

But now she’s waiting for an answer.

She’s standing only mere centimeters away from his face, her breath coming heavy through her teeth as she awaits his explanation.

“I thought… If I could stop you from getting on that boat-”

“I didn’t ask you to do that.” She growls, he almost wishes she would’ve yelled. “I didn’t ask you to change my past, Leonard.”

“If you never got on that boat you wouldn’t be this way.” He tries to reason with her but it’s a mistake, he can see that in the way tears suddenly flood her eyes, though she doesn’t let them fall, and she takes a step back.

It’s quiet, the two of them just watching each other and Sara’s hard exterior crumbling more by the second. He wants to take back what he’s said, to tell her he didn’t mean it like that, but once again the words won’t come.

“I’m not your responsibility,” she finally says, her voice made rough by tears. “Not anymore.”

“Sara-” it’s useless, trying to explain himself now. She’s already turned, already gone, already left him alone to reflect on his mistakes.


	3. I'm Not Sorry

She doesn’t talk to him before, during, or after the funeral. In fact, she is the first to leave the small service, followed by Mick, then Jax. He wants to go after them, to go after her, but he knows such a course of action will only make things worse. A muscle in the ankle he still has twitches, itching to move, but he remains firm where he is. He stays through Kendra placing flowers onto the graves, through her plea for Carter to come back to her, and it pulls on his heart in a manner almost nauseating.

_“I’ll come back to you,”_ Sara had said long ago, her hands framing his face as he fought through a haze of pain just to stay upright and focused on her. _“I promise.”_

She kept her promise. After six years of believing her dead she came back to him, and he screwed it up.

He stays until it’s only him and Hunter, and only then does he leave.

* * *

 

Their next mission has them breaking into The Pentagon in 1986, an assignment that Leonard would probably be much more excited about if he weren’t distracted by trying to come up with a plan to earn back Sara’s friendship. He does his part of the job flawlessly of course, even finds the time to educate Raymond on the benefits of pickpocketing, but his heart isn’t really in it.

And, if Sara steps on his toes a little when she passes by for him to hand her the keycard, well he can’t blame her.

The plan goes to shit, more or less, but it doesn’t have anything to do with either him or her, so he doesn’t care much to dwell on it. Instead he goes off wandering around the ship, intent on holing himself up in that cargo hold. He needs to think, about how to make things right with Sara, about making sure the kid knows he doesn’t have a heart, about how Mick took things too far grabbing the younger Sara, about-

“Hey Snart!”

He sighs and comes to a halt, turning around to see Raymond hurrying after him.

“Can I help you?” He demands, already irritated.

“No just… what was going on with you and Sara back at The Pentagon?” Raymond asks, and a part of Len almost feels bad about brushing him off, he hasn’t known Raymond for long but he knows enough to see that the poor sap’s heart is too big for his own good.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Come on,” The other man insists, “I saw her step on your foot.”

He shrugs, “It was an accident.” He excuses but Ray shakes his head.

“Come on, Sara is a trained assassin, stuff like that doesn’t happen on accident with her.”

Well, he has him there.

“I did something stupid,” he finally gives in, after all, on this ship the truth seems to have a habit of coming out sooner rather than later, so he might as well get ahead of the curve.

 

* * *

 

Sara is sitting on top of a crate in one of the back storage rooms of the ship, her Bo staff in her lap as she tries to focus on cleaning it. It’s working, until Kendra walks in.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She asks, Sara doesn’t even look up or stop her task when she shakes his head.

“Not anymore than I imagine you want to talk about what happened to you.” She says, and now she does glance up, catching Kendra wrapping her arms rather uncomfortably around herself.

“Fair enough,” She agrees. “But I didn’t go out of my way to stomp on Snart’s foot.”

“I didn’t go out of my way,” Sara argues before huffing, the air sending some loose strands of hair up from her face for just a second. “It was a personal thing, that’s all you need to know.” She hopes that’s going to satisfy Kendra, even though she knows it won’t, so she decides to turn the tables. “What about you?”

The other woman shrinks in on herself even more under the sudden scrutiny, if that is even possible.

“I don’t know,” she finally admits quietly, “That’s never happened to me before. But my powers are getting stronger, ever since Carter died…” Sara nods, understanding probably as best as anyone will be able to. Kendra doesn’t seem to really understand herself what is happening to her, but what Sara saw today at The Pentagon is probably as close to her own bloodlust as someone else will ever get.

She’s about to say as much, to tell Kendra that she at least has an idea of what it felt like for her powers to overtake her, but she never gets the chance, because the ship starts shaking.

 

* * *

 

Confiding in Raymond was definitely a mistake, Leonard thinks to himself as the two of them head for the bridge while the ship rocks back and forth rather unsteadily, Raymond pestering him with questions nearly the entire way.

He didn’t tell him everything, barely anything really. All he said was that he stole the jump ship to go back to 2007 and stop Sara from heading down the path that turned her into an assassin, but it didn’t work and now she’s mad at him for trying to interfere with her timeline. But, contrary to his appearance, Raymond isn’t stupid. Like Jax the scientist had assumed Leonard is nothing but a selfish criminal, which he is, so now he’s pestering him with questions about “why”.

“Out of anything you could’ve stolen the jump ship for, why did you-?”

“Raymond!” Leonard snaps, spinning on his heel and facing the other man, albeit unsteadily due to the ship suddenly dropping in speed. “Not now.”

Raymond only looks offended for a few second, if that, perhaps finally understanding that there are more pressing matters at hand than the resident crook’s one selfless deed.

“Right,” he nods and they head on to the bridge, where they learn that they’re being chased by Chronos.

Perfect.

After that it would seem that his day can’t get any worse, but then again Leonard really should know by now that the universe takes thoughts like that one as a challenge. Before he knows it he’s been assigned to play Palmer’s wingman on an undercover trip to the Russian Ballet while they seek out some scientist.

Again, just perfect.

 

* * *

 

Sara is starting to figure out that Rip has more bad ideas than he has good ones, and his latest is just exceptionally terrible. She decided to be a team player and inform him that Kendra needs to get her hawk side under control, less they want to risk somebody seriously getting hurt. The Captain then got it in his head that since she was saying something, she must be qualified to help the other woman.

She did try, he can’t say she didn’t, and for a minute she thought she might be getting somewhere. She lost herself in the training, the feeling of being responsible for someone else making her forget her own problems. Her only focus was Kendra and helping her get the hawk under control.

Until she failed.

Maybe she pushed too hard, maybe she should’ve refused to help because she is every bit as broken inside as Kendra is. Whatever the reason, Chay-Ara came out to play, and she was not in a mood to play nice. The bloodlust didn’t like that, so it attacked, meaning Sara attacked, and almost strangled Kendra. So now she’s here, in her room, sitting with her knees drawn to her chest and tears running down her cheeks.

Her breaths are coming out in stuttering sobs, her eyes squeezed closed as she thinks about what she almost did. The images flash through her mind, of Kendra, of Thea, of all the poor men in seedy bars who chose the wrong night to have too much to drink, and how they paid for it with their lives. She thinks of Mick, he might not have even known what he was doing yesterday, given how close to the vest she’s always known Leonard to keep his plans.

Leonard.

This wouldn’t be happening to her now if he succeeded. She never would have been cursed with this bloodlust, never even would have died on that rooftop in the first place. She never would’ve killed, or tortured, never would have ventured into the darkness at all. But, she thinks to herself as she sits here and struggles to calm her racing heart, she wouldn’t change it. If she never got on that boat, then she never would have met him.

 

* * *

 

By the time they arrive back at the ship Raymond has, mostly, stopped complaining about the cold. Personally Leonard doesn’t think it’s that cold out, even if he is partial to the lower temperature. He’s pretty sure Raymond is just bummed that he struck out with the Russian scientist and so Leonard had to step in. It’s not like he wanted to, or at least, he didn’t once he had. At first he thought it might be a good distraction from Sara, and showing up Mr. Know-it-all was certainly a promising bonus. But once he was flirting with her, once it was too late to stop, he found his heart wasn’t in it. Obviously he’s flirted since returning to Central City five years ago, but that was when he thought Sara was dead. Now things are different. Now he knows she’s alive, and she’s angry with him. All he wants is to make things right with her, or at the very least get her to not hate him. But-

“What happened to you?” He finds himself asking when they come across Kendra, her hand rubbing at the base of her throat as though she’s in pain.

“Ask your girlfriend,” she mumbles, rolling her eyes at him. “Rip asked Sara to train me and she nearly killed me, crazy psycho.”

He’ll make a crack about that later, both the girlfriend comment as well as the psycho one, but first he has something much more important to take care of.

“Where is she?” He asks,

“In her room,” Kendra replies, still rubbing at her throat. He’s fairly certain she says something else, but he doesn’t have time to listen. He has to get to Sara.

He marches down the winding halls of The Waverider until he reaches the barracks, bringing himself immediately to Sara’s door wrapping loudly on it.

“Sara!” He calls, “Sara open up!” Nothing, and it terrifies him. “Sara!” His voice breaks this time with worry, “Sara open up! Sara!” He reaches for a doorknob, but their isn’t one, that isn’t how the doors work on this ship. He needs to get in there, he needs to get to her, he needs to-

The door opens.

He doesn’t have a chance to size up the situation; because once that door opens everything is moving faster than his mind. He doesn’t get to take in the sight of Sara, only the feel of her crashing into him and clinging tight like he’s a lifeline. He doesn’t get a second to see her tears, but he feels them on her cheek against his neck. Her entire body is trembling against him as worry floods his system, his mind racing as it tries to figure out what happened to her. He gets his legs working before his mouth, silently guiding her back into her room where he closes the door behind them. Once they’re alone in the room he brings her down to the floor, getting her to kneel in front of him as he looks her over for injuries.

“What happened?” He asks, she doesn’t look hurt but something is clearly still very wrong, “Sara talk to me, what happened?”  
She keeps sobbing; choking on gasps of air that he thinks are supposed to be words.

“I….I lo…I los… con..con.contro…olll…lll. The bl….bl…blood…bloodlust.”

“Sara,” he whispers, moving a hand to brush the tears away from her face, and he tries not to let the hurt show when she flinches away, if only for a second.

With her cheek now cradled in his hand he wipes her tears with his thumb, a relieved sigh escaping him as she starts to quiet.

“Calm down,” he instructs her gently, “Tell me what happened.”

Despite her red eyes and running nose she chuckles, a faint gleam in her eyes that he’s spent six years thinking about.

“Kind of a lot to tell,” she warns but he smirks, giving her moist cheek another swipe of his thumb.

“We’ve got time.”

* * *

 

She tells him everything.

She starts with where Mick interrupted them yesterday, with Nanda Parbat and The League. She tells him about the training, the assignments, and everything that came with them. Then she tells him about The Undertaking and her return home, about The Canary, and most importantly she tells him about Malcolm Merlin and what he did to her.

She doesn’t miss the way Leonard’s fists clench when she talks about that, nor does she miss the way her own heart skips a beat. Finally, she tells him about the Lazarus Pit and the bloodlust it instilled her with, her penance for coming back. She gives him a few seconds to absorb it all, but not quite enough for him to formulate a proper response, as she does still have one more thing to explain.

“What you said yesterday… what you did-”

“Sara I-”

She shakes her head, cutting off his words. She knows he’s sorry, knows he didn’t mean for what he said to her to come out the way that it did, even if she isn’t sure of how else it was supposed to come out.

“I wouldn’t change what’s happened to me,” she tells him, “It’s sucked, but I was such a spoiled little brat when I got on that boat, looking back I’m happy I was put in a position where I couldn’t stay that way.”

He nods, but still looks like he wishes he had succeeded on his little escapade to her past yesterday. “You would’ve grown up,” he promises her, “Something would have snapped you out of that mindset.”

“Maybe,” she agrees with a nod of her own. “But it wouldn’t have been you.”

She can see his breath catch in his throat when she says that, a pang of guilt hitting her when she realizes that she’s been distant these past few days since they reunited. She needed that distance to get her head on straight, to adjust to the idea that she’s going to be in very close quarters with him once again. She doesn’t regret it, she needed it, but it still hurts to realize that he’s probably spent the time wondering if she still cares about him at all.

“When I was training with The League,” she starts, even though she hadn’t originally been planning to tell him this much. “I kept thinking about you. I kept telling myself that if I ever managed to get out I would go find out what happened to you, and if you were alive… I would find you.”

He looks at her for a minute, processing the information; along with everything else she’s just told him.

“Why didn’t you?” He asks, and she sighs, her eyes flitting away from his for a moment.

“I changed,” she answers simply. “The years went by, and I became a killer. Facing my family was hard enough but you… you taught me to do what was necessary to survive, and what I was doing, it wasn’t just survival anymore.”

He looks like he wants to say something, but a knock at her door prevents him from getting the chance.

“Sara?” Kendra’s voice on the other side is cautious, “Can we talk?”

She sighs, wanting to say no, but after what happened earlier she owes Kendra an apology just as much as she does Leonard an explanation.

“Yeah,” she calls, “Be out in a sec.”

She looks to Leonard then, and sighs, there is so much more that she wants to say to him but they don’t have the time. That might be for the best anyway, he deserves some time to take in everything she has told him.

“I’ll see you later Crook.” With that she gets to her feet and heads out to face Kendra.


	4. Checkmate

While the girls are talking Leonard returns to his room, thinking about everything Sara has just told him. It isn’t the assassin missions, the vigilantism, or even her death that is playing through his mind, though he does give some thought to them. Mostly it’s what she said about yesterday, about how despite all the hell she has endured over the past few years she still wouldn’t stop herself from getting on that boat if she could, because that boat led her to him.

He doesn’t agree with her, to be clear. He would rather she live out a happy and normal life than ever set foot on that prison ship. But, then again, he would also rather the suffering he endured in that hell over having someone change his path so that he never encounters her. The fact that their feelings are the same… it gives him hope. He hasn’t been able to tell what her feelings towards him are ever since the rooftop, aside from angry after his stunt yesterday. To hear that she kept him in mind all these years, that she wouldn’t change anything she’s suffered because through it she found him, well he may not agree that he’s worth it, but he can’t deny that it gives him hope that maybe her feelings for him are still there.

“Mr. Snart,” the voice of the talking computer suddenly calls out from somewhere in his ceiling. “Captain Hunter is requesting your presence on the bridge.”

He sighs; he’ll have to think about this later. “On my way.”

 

* * *

 

He should have told the computer to shove it.

Rip needed him on the bridge because he had a job for him, Raymond, and Mick. Go after The Professor who had apparently gone to the Russian lab to try and retrieve a ball of nuclear energy. He and Raymond were supposed to handle the guards and controls for the reactor core, while Mick was on standby in case things got hairy. With this group, Leonard is starting to realize, things are almost always going to get hairy. Rip sent the four of them on this mission, yet he’s the only one who came out.

He nearly gives Rip an up-close audience with the cold gun for it, but the Captain promises that they’re going to save the three team members he just left behind. If it were just one of them taken, depending on which one, Leonard might not buy it. But all three of them? That is just too much muscle for Rip to sacrifice.

When he calls what remains of the team to the bridge, however, another truth comes out; they didn’t know about the mission.

Jax knew, however he was only informed after it was far too late for him to help. The girls were kept completely in the dark, and judging by the way Sara is biting at her lip when she glances over at him while Rip is bullshitting her, Len knows that she’s just as pissed about all this as he is.

Which, for the record, is an immeasurable amount.

 

* * *

 

Sara knows he’s pissed. Hell, she’s pissed, but Leonard is on a whole other level. After Rip told them about half of the team being taken and most likely thrown into the worst gulag in Soviet Russia he also decided that they’re going to take some time to gather intel and formulate a rescue plan. How he makes it through that conversation without gaining even one black eye, she’ll never know. What she does know is Leonard stalked off without a word to any of them once Rip called the meeting to an end, and that was hours ago.

She knocks on his door once, then twice, and then she sighs.

“Leonard come on, open up.” She growls, but she still doesn’t receive an answer. Snarling a little bit she bangs her fist, as well as her forearm, against the metal of his door yet again.

“You better let me in crook!” She nearly threatens.

“Well,” she hears a somewhat amused, yet still very much flat, voice behind her. “I certainly wouldn’t make you stand out here all night.”

He looks tired. That’s the first thing she notices. In fact, tired might be putting it lightly; he looks completely exhausted. His face is long and his knuckles are decorated with fresh bruises, he’s probably been hitting a punching bag or something else of the sort. For a second they just stare at each other, both of them trying to figure out whose move it is to make here.

It’s his.

He steps past her and places his hand on the scanner, opening the door and allowing her to fallow him in. They remain in silence even after the door is closed, Leonard taking more time than is necessary with unbuckling the holster for his gun from his leg. Whilst he does that Sara occupies herself with glancing around the space. It’s one of the two person cabins; two pod like bunks built into the far wall, though she knows better than to worry about a roommate interrupting them. Despite housing two people the room is practically bare, just a handful of belongings on each desk, none of which look particularly valuable but yet must be incredibly so, and the blankets on the top bunk are a little mussed up. Otherwise, aside from the fatigued man standing in the middle of it, there is almost no evidence anyone resides in here.

Speaking of Leonard, he’s finished discarding his weapon along with his jacket, and he’s watching her again.

Her move.

She doesn’t know what to say. She thought she had a plan, that she would come here and tell him she’s sorry Mick got left behind and they’ll get him back, but the words freeze in her throat. They’re useless. He doesn’t need her pity, nor does he want it. He knows what the deal is, just as well as he knows Mick will be just fine on his own in the gulag. This is about something else, something bigger than just Mick getting captured and Rip not doing a damn thing to stop it. That’s part of it, a big part, but there’s more.

So, instead of telling Leonard what he already knows, she nods to the deck of cards on his desk.

“I’ve brushed up on my gin,” she tells him, “Might be able to beat you now.”

The expression he gives her isn’t quite a smirk, isn’t quite a smile, and is very, vey forced. But there’s still something genuine about it, maybe some amusement at the suggestion that she could ever beat him at his best game. He picks up the cards and heads towards the bottom bunk, dealing out the hand while she follows.

 

* * *

 

She has gotten better.

They play a few hands in silence, Leonard wins the first one without even cheating, and the second, but when Sara claims victory early on the third he realizes that she may have been letting him win those last two. So he taps into his skillset, something he’s sure she’s aware of, but she doesn’t call him on it. They remain quiet as the games go on; the only sound that of the periodic reshuffling of the cards. It gives him time to think about their current predicament, and not just the captured teammates aspect of it.

“Do you remember,” He finally says, after two hands of carefully thinking his words over in his head. “What I told you that night you asked me what would happen to us if Ivo ever found the Mirakuru?”

It’s been six years since that conversation, closer to seven really, so he isn’t going to hold it against her if she claims to have no memory of it. But that isn’t the case. She nods, her steely gaze locked onto his eyes.

“You told me to stay behind you.” She says, and he nods. They play another hand, letting the words hang between them for a moment.

“Things are different here,” he finally says, “For starters, I’m no navigator when it comes to history, not right now anyway.”

“And I’m not so helpless these days.” She reminds him and he nods, she wasn’t exactly defenseless back during their original conversation but he knows what she means.

She doesn’t need him to look out for her.

Doesn’t mean he isn’t going to.

“No,” His agreement is all that he voices, the word drawling out as he carefully constructs his next one. “But you aren’t the one I’m worried about.”

She holds his gaze for a few seconds, but he knows she’s understood. “The others.”

“Rip may not be Ivo,” He acknowledges with a nod, “But he’s made it pretty clear that we’re all more or less expendable.”

A part of him is expecting her to at least try arguing, especially since she came on this mission as a means of trying to get her life together. Hunter gave her hope up on that rooftop, but the way that she’s nodding along with his words, it’s clear she doesn’t see the man as any sort of savior.

“This isn’t The Amazo,” she acknowledges, “Here, we’re all supposed to be a team.”

Now it’s his turn to agree, “Everybody who came on this mission, for whatever reason, did so under the impression that they could trust Hunter.”

“And now half of them are stuck in one of the worst prisons in Russian history, most likely under Savages thumb.” She finishes for him and he nods again.

“If things go south, well, more south than this. We need to have a plan.” He finally proposes, “I’ve watched the kid fly that jump ship, and I’ve started reading the owners manual. Not that I think he won’t come, but on the off chance he doesn’t, I think I can fly it.”

“We can’t leave any of them behind.” She tells him firmly.

“And if they don’t give us a choice?” He counters and she looks like she wants to argue, but can’t think of words for an argument at the moment, and they are technically only talking hypothetical here, so she sighs and lets it go.

“Where would we go?” She asks instead.

“Some place Hunter would never even think to look for us,” he says, “The absolute last place any sane person would go.”

A small smile starts to tug at the corner of her lips, she knows exactly where he’s talking about. “I think you and I might know a place.”

 

* * *

 

Two days pass.

Jax is slowly becoming a walking ball of nerves, which, in his own way, Leonard is as well. Sara isn’t sure if the others notice or not, but she does. His temper is shorter, his sarcasm more frequent and biting; he’s more irritable overall. She was brought on board because she’s a master assassin, trained in the art killing. So, when tensions rise to the point where she has found herself playing peacekeeper, that’s how you know things are bad.

It’s her idea to hunt down a member of The Bratva for information, a plan Leonard approves of. It’s the first time in days that she sees a genuine smirk of approval on his face, one she knows is reminiscent of their old friend Anatoly.

Getting the information out of the Bratva Captain they corner in the sauna is easy, though it would have been easier if Leonard stepped in instead of allowing the mountain of a man to beat the ever-living crap out of Rip. Still, Sara can’t exactly blame him for that. Some small payback for letting Mick and the others get captured.

But the time for pettiness is over now. Everything in their escape plan has to go perfect, or else.

“Impressive how many weapons you can fit in that outfit,” he’s baiting her, and she isn’t in the mood. So she tosses him the case with Ray’s suit, which he catches easily. “And how much stupidity Raymond can squeeze into this one.” She can feel his eyes on her, but she keeps gearing up. “What did Rip keep you after class to talk about?”  
“He just wanted to go over a few details of the plan.” She isn’t sure why she’s even bothering, especially with an excuse as pathetic as that one. Leonard is a smart man; he probably already has an idea about what Rip wanted without even asking.

“He wants you to take out the old man doesn’t he?” He doesn’t give her a chance to answer. “It’s the obvious play. It’s also heartless.”

“The plan is to save Stein,” she snaps, turning over her shoulder to meet his rather unimpressed gaze. “And if for whatever reason we can’t Rip showed me what will happen to my home, to our families. To my parents and Laurel, to Lisa, to everyone any of us have ever cared about. If Stein breaks the damage is irreversible.”

There are unshed tears in her eyes, possibly the only thing keeping him from commanding her to leave his sister out of this. It’s a card she didn’t want to play, but maybe it will show him how serious this is, and why they need this contingency plan.

After a moment of simply staring each other down she turns back to her weapons case, and he approaches her.

“The other night I asked you if you remember what I said about Ivo finding the Mirakuru,” he drawls, leaning his arms on the surface of the workbench so that he’s eye to eye with her. “Now I’m asking if you remember what I said right after you sold out Oliver.”

She has to think on that one for a minute. She remembers that afternoon, that conversation so much like this one. She had been packing up a handgun instead of a sniper rifle that day, and so much doubt had been swimming through her head; wondering if she would be able to pull the trigger if it came down to it, as well as who would be face down the barrel.

Now there isn’t a doubt in her mind.

“You told me we were all pawns,” she answers, to which he blinks his eyes closed for the briefest of moments.

“Doesn’t seem like that’s changed either,” he mumbles, more to himself than to her. “How about before that?”

She thinks again, a look of annoyance crossing her face as she remembers. “Like I said back then; this isn’t a bank heist. This is bigger than me and you, Rip isn’t just asking me to kill; he’s asking me to save the future. If for whatever reason we can’t save Stein, then I’m gonna do what needs to be done.”

She almost thinks he’s going to leave the conversation be, but of course he just smirks at her.

“You’re good at following orders Sara.” He says, “It’s what’s kept you alive all these years, and incidentally when you don’t listen the consequences for you have always been, well, disastrous.”

“What are you getting at?” She demands as he brings his weight off the workbench and begins to very, very slowly pace around her.

“Come on,” he drawls, like she should already know exactly what he’s talking about. “You disobeyed your father and Queen’s boat sunk. You followed my instructions on The Amazo and it kept you alive, you betrayed Ivo and Slade Wilson got ahold of the Mirakuru, and later nearly destroyed your home because of it. You obeyed those assassins and you survived, until you ran away from them, back home, and it got you killed.” She’s glaring at him now, and he’s made his way to the door. “But let me ask you, all those times you didn’t follow orders and things went wrong; would you change it?”

He doesn’t wait for her answer, of course, just leaves her to think on it.

* * *

 

Throughout the mission to the gulag he keeps making comments about her killing Stein, even after they split up and she’s lining up the shot his words are still ringing in her head.

Until they’re in her ear.

“Sara don’t do it.”

She doesn’t want to, she really doesn’t want to.

“I don’t have a choice.” She isn’t sure if she’s trying to convince Leonard or herself. “It’s the only way to the future.”

“That’s how a killer thinks,” his voice echoes back over the comms at her, “And that’s not you anymore.”

She doesn’t want it to be. But he’s right about what he said earlier. Every time she’s taken matters into her own hands things have gone badly. She isn’t as young and naive as she was back before The Amazo, on the island, or even in The League. It took dying for her to realize that her mistakes can never truly be fixed, and the entire twenty-first century, her family and Leonard’s, isn’t something she wants to take a risk on.

But she watches as Stein is led away, as she loses the shot, and though she is far from a religious woman, once he’s gone she bows her head and prays she hasn’t just made another irreversible mistake.

“He’s in the lab,” she confirms over the comms, I’ll meet you guys down there.

She, Leonard, and Jax all reconvene down in the prison yard, which is a mess of rioting prisoners right now thanks to whatever Leonard did when freeing Mick and Ray. She doesn’t see them anywhere, but they have to be safe somewhere, otherwise Leonard likely wouldn’t be out here standing next to her. They need to go, and maybe they could focus on finding a way out if Valentina Vostkov hadn’t just kicked down the door to the lab and walked out as a living ball of fire.

She merged with Stein.

She’s shooting fireball after fireball at guards and prisoners alike, yet when Leonard raises his gun to take her out Jax holds up his arm and commands him to stop because killing Valentina will kill Stein.

Then, suddenly, Sara finds herself demanding to know why Jax is about to run head first into the fray.

“I’m going to get Stein back!” He tells her, shouting over the noise of Valentina’s fire.

“We’ll cover you,” Leonard promises and then, just like that, they’re in the thick of it.

She takes on their adversaries with her batons while Leonard does the same around her with his cold gun. They don’t talk, but she knows to stay on his left, taking everyone on that side while he handles the right, hopefully keeping as many off of Jax as possible.

She hears him talking, trying to reach Stein and get him to fight against Valentina’s will. A part of her thinks it’s pointless, a surefire way to get them all killed. That small ember of innocence is back in her chest, preaching that it will work. She tries to squash it down, because she knows that it won’t. Jax is putting his life on the line for a gamble he isn’t going to win. Sheput _all_ their lives, not to mention countless others, on the line for the very same gamble, which is about to literally blow up in their faces.

Yet, somehow, it doesn’t.

Jax touches Valentina and the next thing Sara knows he’s on the ground at her feet, with Stein not too far away.

 

* * *

 

They have a little celebration once they’re all back on the ship, not that Stein really understands what it is they’re celebrating but he doesn’t have to. Rip heads out of the office to the main control console of the ship and Sara follows him, so Leonard decides that he’s best staying in his seat in the corner of the party. He’s content to observe Mick, drinking away any notion of caring for Raymond, and Jax and The Professor arguing over if either of them should be allowed to drink. He’s pretty sure that Kendra finds it all rather endearing, judging by the way she’s smiling at the exchange. Len knows that he’s smiling as well, but it isn’t because of the argument happening before him. Well, it is, but he isn’t smiling because of the ludicrous subject matter. He’s smiling because this argument is able to take place before him, because Sara didn’t pull the trigger when she had the chance.

Speaking of Sara, she’s sauntering back in, and she’s heading for him. He raises an eyebrow as she approaches, to which she smirks.

Then the ship lurches.

They all go toppling over, some managing to grab onto things and some not. Leonard manages to keep himself in his chair with a hard grip on the table right next to him with one hand, the other securing over Sara when she is thrown onto his lap.

“What was that?” She demands when the shaking stops and they all begin picking themselves up.

“We have been struck with an explosive projectile.” Gideon answers, her voice far to calm for the situation. Len helps Sara detangling herself from him as Rip orders they all get to their seats, utterly confused as to how anyone managed to find them in the temporal zone.

At this point, Len doesn’t even know why he’s surprised to hear that its Chronos, who else would it be? Rip gets yet another chance to demonstrate non-existent piloting skills while Gideon fires a counter attack against Chronos. She’s good, but this is a bounty hunter who has been trained to handle ships exactly like The Waverider and anything they can dish out, so it isn’t really a surprise that he has the better missiles; one of which hits, and down they go, crashing through time.


	5. Give it Time (And Pray We Won't Run Out)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took so long! I finished it a few days ago and then, after proofreading, decided to rewrite it!

They land, badly, in Star City 2046. From that landing things only go from bad to worse. The city is absolute the definition of apocalyptic and, surprise, that apocalypse was brought on by none other than Slade Wilson’s son.

The entire day is just one disaster after another. As if crash landing in the wasteland ruled by the son of a, possibly former, homicidal maniac isn’t bad enough, Mick get’s attached. Leonard and him stumble across some gang and after Mick takes out the leader he assumes command.

Perfect.

While Sara is running off after the new Green Arrow with Hunter and the rest of their motley crew works on fixing the ship, Leonard spends the day trying to talk some sense into his partner. It doesn’t work, unsurprisingly, so he’s resorted to desperate measures and knocked him out before dragging his body back to the ship. Later, when Sara went to save the new Arrow from execution, he was surprised to see Mick joining him and the team in backing her up, even if he was a little extra aggressive with his gun and didn’t say anything to anyone the entire time.

Now all of that is over. Now the team is waiting patiently back on the ship while he and Sara are down in the Arrow bunker with Queen and his new sidekick Connor.

“We have a lot of work to do,” Oliver announces as the four of them file into his busted and cluttered lair.

“That might be an understatement.” Leonard says as he looks around, taking in the sight of all the shredded tarps haphazardly draped across support beams, the light coat of ashes mixed with dust on seemingly every surface, and the one chair in the room, that looks like it might disintegrate underneath anyone who might dare and sit on it.

Oliver doesn’t appear to take offence to the comment, looking back at him and smiling with what is probably the most genuine happiness he has shown, or even felt, in a long time.

“With Grant Wilson gone the criminals of this city will be in a free-for-all.” He says instead, like he also needs to point out the obvious.

“I feel like I should stay,” Sara says, and this time when Oliver looks over to him Leonard looks away.

He doesn’t want to stay. He wants to stop Savage; he’s just finished explaining that much to Mick. But if Sara decided to stay… he knows he would too. Then Mick would stay, and he would rob. But with Sara trying to stop the crime things would get complicated, fast.

Hell, things are already getting complicated.

Thankfully, Oliver doesn’t look like he’s going to let her stick around.

“Before Ray left, he told me why Rip brought you all together. It’s important, Sara.” He reminds her and even from where he’s standing behind her Leonard can tell she’s smiling.

“I just hate the idea of leaving you here to fix it all alone.”

“I’m not alone,” Oliver reminds her, Connor beaming with tears in his eyes. Oliver makes sure to look at them both now, a proud smile still on his face. “Take care of each other.”

Leonard nods, so does Sara, then she gives her old friend a hug with a murmured “you too,” before heading to leave.

Leonard, however, stays where he is until she reaches the elevator and looks back at him.

“You go ahead,” he encourages her, “I’ll be along in a second.”

She doesn’t argue, which he was half expecting her to. Once she’s gone he sets his eyes on Oliver, who nods before turning to his young protégé.

“Connor, could you give us the room for a minute?” He requests and thankfully the kid, probably no older than Jax, nods.

“Sure, I’ll just be over there.” He awkwardly excuses himself, maneuvering around the piles of scrap metal and whatever else is littering the floor down here.

Oliver waits until he’s gone, and then turns his gaze onto Leonard, but he doesn’t say anything. He knows Len has stayed for a reason, so he’s waiting to find out what that is.

“Why didn’t you tell me she was alive?” He asks, his voice more full of hurt than he had anticipated it would sound.

Oliver sighs, scratching at his head as he takes a step forward. “At first,” he says, now settling his hands onto his hips. “I didn’t know.” He lets that hang in the air for a second, like this next part is going to be painful. “I thought she died when The Amazo went down, by the time she came back I had already been home for over a year. I never went to check if you had made it back, so when she came back and came to me… I figured you were dead, and if you weren’t… I was young and I still had feelings for her. I wasn’t about to look a gift hoarse in the mouth by looking for you.”

Len gives that a moment of thought. He wants to be angry over it, and he knows he has a right to be. But after tonight…

“Wasn’t a gift hoarse,” he finally sighs, “Just look at what happened tonight. Even after all these years she’s still chasing after you.”

Oliver does smile at that, but it’s a closed mouth, knowing smile that puts Leonard on edge, he doesn’t like when people look at him like they know something he doesn’t.

“Sara will always chase after me,” he admits, rather boldly in Leonard’s opinion. “Just like I will always chase after her. The two of us, we can both pinpoint the exact moment in which we ended up on this road, and despite taking different paths, it’s the exact same moment. If we lose each other out in the field, then suddenly that moment is no longer the one that made a hero; it’s the one that sentenced an innocent kid to death. Trust me.”

The desperation in his voice is too great for Len to ignore. He finds himself suddenly, and painfully, reminded that Oliver is speaking from experience here, that Sara has already died once before.

“Sara and I have been through too much together to not share a love for each other, but you’re the one she’s in love with.” Oliver continues on, so sure in what he’s saying. “It was as easy to see today as it ever was. So take it from a man who’s lost everything Leonard, don’t.”

* * *

 

It’s hours after the mission. After the long, exhausting mission, and Sara can’t sleep. She tries, but every time she closes her eyes she sees her city in ruins, her friends and family all dead, and her along with them. After tossing and turning but not getting any closer to sleep for over an hour she finally gets up and heads to the galley for some water, hoping that maybe the walk will help clear her head enough to sleep.

Turns out, she isn’t the only one whose had this idea.

Leonard is sitting at the counter when she gets there, an empty glass in front of him and his eyes glancing over to her when she comes in, but otherwise her doesn’t acknowledge her presence. He remains quiet while she gets a glass for herself and fills it with water, the tension heavy as she sits down next to him. She takes a long gulp from the glass, trying to think of something to say.

“Avoiding your room?” she finally settles on, though he doesn’t respond right away. He takes a second, skimming his finger around the rim of his empty glass, like he’s considering her question very seriously.

“Couldn’t sleep anyway,” he excuses, “Too much on my mind, and not just Mick.”

She nods, pursing her lips and debating whether or not she wants to ask, because she is fairly confident she already knows the answer.

“You want to talk about it?” He looks at her skeptically, all the proof she needs to confirm that her hunch is right.

It isn’t exactly something _she_ wants to talk about, but they’re going to have to eventually and, after today, after she considered staying in 2046, it should be soon.

“I get that you’ve changed,” he finally says, keeping his eyes locked onto the finger dancing around his glass. “It’s been six years since the submarine, and you’ve been through a lot. I’m not asking you if your feelings for me are one of the things that’s changed, I just-”

“They haven’t,” she interrupts him quickly, suddenly, and with no intentions of it. It’s too late to take it back now, though, and he’s finally looking at her. “They haven’t changed,” she confirms, “But, like you said, I have. I’m not the same girl you knew six years ago Leonard. Ok? I have done unspeakable things in the name of The League.”

“Sara I don’t care about any of that,” he promises, like he’s hurt that she could ever think he would care.

“I know you don’t,” she assures him, her voice beginning to break. “But still, I just… it’s too soon Len. I don’t want to start something and wonder if it’s really me you want, or the person I was six years ago. Even if that wasn’t a factor I… I died, Leonard. I need some time to figure out where I go from there, what I do after something like that.”

He nods, smirking at her after a moment. “Promise you’ll come find me when you’re ready, one way or the other?”

Now it’s her turn to smirk, “Of course.” She says, “Now, if you’re still avoiding your room; I don’t think I can sleep either, if you’re up for a card game.”

 

* * *

 

They spend the night, and then the majority of the week, playing cards. Since she’s already detailed most of what she’s been up to the last six years Leonard shares what he’s been doing. It’s mostly stories from prison, though he does tell her about Lisa and even a little about Mick, stories that don’t involve criminal activities. He also talks about facing off against Barry, which leads to a conversation about her suit and Cisco. He learns that she’s never actually met Cisco, but that her sister has and apparently asked the inventor to come up with the white outfit. As the days stretch on and Rip still doesn’t come out of his office they spend more and more of their time playing cards and getting reacquainted. In a way it starts to almost feel like old times, sneaking around the ship in search of neglected corners to play cards in. The only thing missing is the ever-present fear of death if they were to be caught, something Leonard does not miss.

Still, the act of avoiding Mick and his blown fuse almost makes up for it.

Leonard knows he has to deal with that problem, but he can’t exactly tell his friend what he wants to hear. What he needs to do is come up with a way to coerce Mick into wanting to stop Savage, and then all his problems will be solved. But something like that is proving to take time, especially with Mick STILL mad at him even five days after leaving apocalyptic Star City.

“You know you’re going to have to talk to him eventually,” Sara reminds him after Mick goes stomping out of the cargo hold, restless from being trapped on the ship for so many days, the fact that he was pissed off to begin with not helping.

“I know,” he answers, studying his cards. “But now’s not the time. He’s too wound up, he needs to cool down first.”

“Better hope he gets that chance soon,” Sara practically scoffs, pretending to study her own cards. “Otherwise you’re going to have one hell of a problem on your hands.”

He looks flatly at her; he doesn’t need her to tell him any of that. Yet, if that were true, he probably wouldn’t be sitting here in denial of his life falling apart.

But he can keep it together. He always has, in the face of situations much more dire than this one. He knows how to gets what he wants, how to keep what he has, and this isn’t going to be any different than it ever been before.

Or, so he keeps telling himself.

 

* * *

 

Not long after Mick leaves the cargo hold Rip calls them all to the bridge, apparently they’ve intercepted a distress signal from a Time Master and, even though it’s probably a trap, they’re going after it. Rip is taking half of the team over to the other ship using the jump ship, while the other half of them remain on The Waverider just in case this distress signal isn’t what it claims to be. Stein and Jax are going over, as is Mick, and Sara watches from her seat as Leonard approaches his partner in what is probably the first time all week. It doesn’t look like it goes well, but she wasn’t expecting it too. Mick brushes past Len after only a few seconds, following after Rip. She straightens up a little when Len meets her eyes across the room, looking dejected but not surprised; he obviously hadn’t had high expectations of that conversation either.

The two of them stay on the bridge with Kendra and Ray while the others are gone, not that those two would notice if they left. They’re caught up in a world all their own, flirting with each other like they don’t have anything to lose. It’s admirable, Sara thinks, and while it’s clear that there isn’t anything official between them, not yet anyway, the attraction is there. Besides, with how open both Kendra and Ray are with their emotions it won’t be long before it’s acted upon. She knows the situation is different, that Ray never met Kendra before all of this and that it isn’t likely either one of them has ever been swallowed by darkness, but Sara can’t help wishing things could be as easy for her and Leonard. She wishes they weren’t held back by so much baggage, or the need for time. If only things were different.

But, then again, if things were different they wouldn’t be them, and her thoughts wouldn’t have just been interrupted by a call from a Time Pirate announcing he’s holding the half of the team who responded to the distress signal hostage.

He wants the ship, failure to surrender will cost them Rip’s life, but of course nobody who has as many enemies as Rip Hunter leaves his home base vulnerable to takeover.

One minute they can hear the Captain bragging to the pirate about how Ray supposedly won some huge battle, and the next Gideon is firing weapons in response to the code phrase he has apparently spoken.

The attack, only a warning shot according to Gideon, earns them a few shots from the other ship, one that pierces the hull and another that takes out their autopilot.

While Ray flies the ship, which is hardly a comforting thought, Sara goes with Len to the engine room to patch up the hole before it causes any damage.

“Are you sure your gun can fix this?” She asks when they see the size of the hole, nearly big as her head.

“If I lay it on thick enough,” he answers, already firing the ice gun at the hole. It takes time; a lot of time, and the hole is barely half fixed when the gun runs out of charge and the doors slide closed; locking them in.


	6. Never Enough

They pace the room in a vain attempt to keep warm for a little while, but eventually they both sink down against the fuel tanks of the ship.

“Is this really happening?” Sara asks after a few minutes of silence between them, “Did we really survive all that thinking each other dead stuff just to die together?”

He chuckles at her observation, making her smile, though that smile falters when he shudders as though in pain.

“Of all the times we’ve almost died, this one wouldn’t be the worst way to go.” He says with another shudder.

“What’s wrong?” Sara asks, to which he smirks.

“Other than slowly freezing to death?” He asks sarcastically. “It’s my leg, the shell is made of a thin metal, light but durable, Anatoly said it’s one of the best. But metal gets, gets cold quick.” He stutters and Sara’s eyes widen just a bit at the reminder of what the gangrene took from him.

He brings his knee up to his chest then, bending over and pushing at something in his ankle until it clicks, before he stops and looks at her.

She knows he has to do this, less he wants to die that much quicker, or suffer severe frostbite if they get out of this. But there is still a question in his eyes, a wondering if this is too intimate for her, which his ridiculous because it’s _his_ leg. He should be the one who decides where to draw the boundary line. But he can’t, and really, neither can she. That right has been taken away from both of them. Still, she nods her head slightly, and it’s all that he needs. With his hand still at his ankle he slides his prosthetic leg off, freeing it from his stiff jeans, and then holds it up to examine.

“Do you think we could break that window with this?” He asks, cocking his head over to the door that has trapped them in here, and the little window in the center of it.

“Maybe,” Sara half agrees, “Does it matter? It’s not like there’s a knob on the other side for us to turn.”

He nods in agreement and places the leg at his side, then brings his arms back where they had previously been wrapped around himself.

“Fair point,” he acknowledges, and they sit shivering in silence for a few more minutes before she can’t take it anymore.

“I hated dying the first time,” she says, not really sure why she feels such a need to share that information. Maybe it’s just to keep talking, or maybe it’s because while she’s told him what happened when she died she didn’t have time to really talk about the details.

He looks at her curiously, silently signaling her to continue, and she does.

“Falling off that building, already half dead, all I could think about was how everybody I loved felt like they were a million miles away.” She wants to tell him that he was one of the people to cross her mind in those final moments, how she instantly regretted never going to find him. But she’s the one who asked him for time, the one who said she isn’t ready. It’s not fair for her to just take that back, because it won’t change if they do make it out of here.

Still, as another shiver wracks through her body, she is painfully aware that it’s a pretty big “if”.

“I felt like that in the sub,” he admits after a moment, and now it’s her turn to look curious. While they have certainly spent the past week catching up and talking until there might not be any stories left to tell, he hadn’t given her any detail about what happened on that sub.

“It took time to get to Russia, we lost count of the days. Anatoly hacked off my leg with a crowbar, and the gangrene was still in my system, so I spent most of the trip barely conscious on the floor. All I could think about was Lisa, Mick… everybody I still cared about.” He trails a little awkwardly, and Sara finds herself shifting unconsciously closer to his side, knowing that he means her. “When I was in the hospital Anatoly told me there were times I would call out their names in my sleep.” His eyes become distant with that thought, like he’s lost somewhere in the past, before a shiver brings him back. “After surviving that and making it home, I didn’t think I would ever be stupid enough to myself in a position like that again. But, here we are.”

Sara hums in agreement, her whole body shuttering violently with the cold. She feels him leaning forward, and thinks he’s just shifting to try and keep his bones from freezing, but shakes her head when she notices him taking off his jacket.

“No,” she commands through her chattering teeth. “No, keep your, keep your jacket.”

“Your smaller than me,” he reasons as he finishes taking it off, holding it out to her even though she’s made no move to take it. “Please,” he says, his tone bordering on begging. “Take it.”

She’s sure that there is more behind his words. Perhaps a memory of when she left him on the sub, barely able to keep himself upright against the wall, no way of stopping her. It might be the guilt of her actual death, how he hadn’t even known she was alive to be in danger. He could be thinking of any of the other times Ivo threatened her life to him without her knowledge, she doesn’t even want to know how many of those there were. Whatever it is, one thing is clear by the desperate look in his eyes. He’s lost her before, more times than a person should lose someone they care about, and he’s never been able to save her.

He can’t save her now; they both know it. That jacket isn’t going to make much of a difference in a room where the invasive cold of outer space has the temperature dropping by the minute. But he can try.

“Thank you,” she says, accepting the jacket and shoving her arms inside. There is no warmth left to it but she still tugs it tightly around herself, burying her chin in the collar as she settles back against him.

He puts his arm around her, pulling her even closer until she’s practically in his lap. Nuzzling her face into his chest is instinctive, and Sara chooses to blame it on the cold. They remain quiet for awhile, the steady beat of his heart against her ear soothing her. It gives her hope that they still have some time left, that they aren’t frozen just yet.

As the silence drags on, however, that time starts to dwindle. Eventually it gets to the point where she can’t hear his heart anymore; they’re both shivering too much.

“I love you,” she finds herself murmuring, her throat so cold that it hurts to speak.

“What?” Len asks, almost hissing with the effort, and if her eyes weren’t frozen Sara would probably start crying right about now.

Instead she coughs, forcing strength back into her voice. “I know I said I need time, and I do. But I don’t want to die without saying it, not again.”

She is already curled into his chest, his arm already around her and holding her close as she can physically get. But he still pulls her closer, a numb weight suddenly pressing down on the top of her head that she recognizes as a kiss.

“I love you too,” he whispers, then begins coughing loudly with the effort that talking has required.

She tries to press herself even further into his chest, as if she still has some heat in her body and could use it to thaw his lungs. His other arm comes to wrap around her, his chin resting on her shoulder once his coughing has ceased. Upon creaking her eyes open she can see the small icicles that have formed on the stubble of his closely shaven sideburns. His skin has lost all feeling against hers, but she still presses her nose against his cheek. They’re going to die like this, she’s sure of it. But, after everything they’ve gone through to get back to each other, at least they’ll die together.

Then a machine hums to life somewhere in the room.

“Dr. Palmer has succeeded in repairing the ship’s hull.” Gideon’s lively voice announces from overhead, “I am slowly increasing the temperature in the engine room now, and would advise that you remain where you are while I do so.”

Sara laughs and feels Len smirking beside her, of course they would make it out only minutes after admitting love.

“Looks like we’ve got a little more time Canary,” he snarks, his breath still visible in the air and voice still trembling with cold, but at least now they know it’ll get better.

 

* * *

 

_“Looks like we’ve got a little more time Canary,”_ That was what, twenty minutes ago? Not even, Len is pretty sure. He cans till feel the chill of the engine room in his bones, is still bothered by the icy feeling of metal against the skin of his knee, he knew he should have pushed Anatoly for the fiberglass leg. The point is it wasn’t all that long ago he thought he and Sara had cheated death yet again and found themselves with a little more time, but turns out it wasn’t meant to last.

They might not die here, they’ve been in far worse, but for him at least, time is definitely up.

Behind him stands Sara, Raymond, and Kendra. One half of the team put together to stop Savage and save the world, one of them the very woman he has spent six years wishing more than anything he could see again. In front of him is Mick, his oldest friend, his partner, with a gang of time pirates backing him up.

“Time to choose a side, I guess.” He drawls. _He can’t make it work, no matter how much he wants to he can’t. He’s out of time._ “Chosen.”

He opens fire on the pirates.

“Bastard!” Mick shouts as he opens fire of his own, which Len supposes is fair. He runs around the corner with the others, Mick shouting after and undoubtedly chasing them.

“You chose us over Rory?!” Ray exclaims as they run, the sound of pirates getting closer with every step prompting Len to look over his shoulder.

“Very observant Raymond!” He half mocks, firing his gun at an approaching pirate. There are more where that one came from, of course, but while many follow after their group the others go in the opposite direction.

“I’ll circle around and see where they’re headed!” Sara announces, taking off down the hall and Len watches her go for a second, then looks to Raymond, and while helping Kendra take out the attacking pirates the other man nods, so Len follows Sara.

Running through the halls of ship he comes across more dead pirates than live ones, which makes his stomach churn just a little but he ignores it in favor of continuing to run. He follows the trail of bodies deep into the ship, down where all the critical systems for the ship are kept.

That’s where he finds Mick, back facing the door, the fire exploding out his gun, and the faintest glimpse of Sara spinning behind a piece of machinery silences any second thoughts he could’ve possibly had.

“Mick!” He shouts, and when he old friend whirls around he doesn’t hesitate and shoots him square in the chest.

He can hear Raymond and Kendra coming up behind him while Mick looks up at him, staring down the barrel of his gun, which he is still half considering shooting again. Rip comes over the comms around that time, asking about their status.

“What are you gonna do, Snart?” Mick rumbles, only half picking himself up, like he’s waiting to be put down.

Leonard won’t give him that satisfaction.

He holsters his gun and walks past his supposed partner, crouching down next to Sara where she’s sitting behind the large piece of machinery and clutching her bicep. There are tears in her eyes, but he’s pretty sure that they aren’t completely from the pain. She leans away from him when he reaches for her arm, like she doesn’t want him to see what his best friend has done to her. Still, he needs to see it, so when his fingertips graze tenderly at her hand she allows herself to uncoil her body, turning herself to the side so that he can inspect her injury.

He inhales sharply when he sees it, suddenly aware of the tears in his own eyes as the blood boils hotter in his veins. The fabric of her shirt is torn and melted to her skin, her flesh a blistering mess.

“Gideon can fix me,” she assures him quickly, and he nods because he doesn’t trust his voice. Whether that’s he doesn’t trust it not to cry or not to yell he isn’t sure, but he is glad that he’s heard Ray and Kendra taking Mick out of the room.

“Come on,” Sara says, getting herself to her feet and he follows her numbly.

 

* * *

 

She gets patched up, the team comes to a unanimous agreement that Mick is too dangerous to remain on board, and he leaves him out in the middle of the woods somewhere to be picked up later, telling himself it will be easier to ask for the team’s forgiveness rather than their permission. He leads them on to think that he’s killed Mick, stopped him as a threat permanently, though he isn’t sure they all buy it, and he finds that he doesn’t exactly care.

It’s been a long day, a long past hour really, and all he wants to do is sleep it all away.

But, when he reaches his room, he can’t bring himself to open that door. On the other side is a room he’d shared with Mick, a room he had barely wanted to enter all week. He had slept there, with Mick snoring above him, waiting for the tension to blow.

Now it had, and he can’t face that room. So he ventures further down the hall, a part of him wondering if this is really a good idea in light of what happened earlier today, what was said, and the knowledge that they both still need time. He tells himself that doesn’t matter right now, that regardless of where their feelings for each other stand he and Sara are still friends first and foremost, and he could really use a friend right now.

He knocks twice on her door, and when she opens it he almost feels bad. She’s dressed in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt, one with sleeves just long enough to cover her biceps, though he knows Gideon’s healing didn’t allow any burns to be left behind. He doesn’t know what to say; how to explain himself, so he is very relieved when it turns out he doesn’t need to.

“Come in,” she more orders than invites, not that he minds. He enters her room in a very zombie like fashion, much like the way he walked back onto the ship. She closes the door and then comes to stand before him, studying his disheveled appearance as though she’s trying to determine the best course of action.

After a few seconds of sizing him up she starts to bite at her lip, her hands reaching forward hesitantly, giving him plenty of opportunity to back away but he has no desire. All he wants is her. Her strength, her smile, her optimism in the face of the absolute shittiest situation imaginable; he just wants to crash into her and listen to her soothing voice promise that he made the right call, that he couldn’t have done anything differently.

When her hands finally land on his shoulders their grip is firm, despite her trepidation, and she’s quick in pushing his jacket down his arms until it’s nothing but a small pile on her floor. Next she moves for his gun, her fingers grazing the butt end lightly.

“Let’s get rid of this,” she suggests, even though he’s already unbuckling the holster for her. Normally he is possessive of his gun to a near manic degree, but as she takes it from him and moves to lay it on her desk, he doesn’t feel any need to watch her or what she’s doing.

When she returns to his side she takes his arm gently in her hands and leads him to her bed, sitting him down before unlacing his boots and pulling them off. Once that’s done and she’s sitting upright, looking at him and waiting for him to react, he can’t help but to shutter. Even the thought of discussing what’s happened today is too much. He feels her arm snaking across his shoulders, her fingers caressing gentle strokes across his back. He’s never been much of a crying person, tears never accomplish anything, but he can’t stop them from rolling down his cheeks, nor does he have the energy to stop his tired body from sagging into Sara’s open embrace. She holds him close as he cries, murmuring that she’s sorry. She doesn’t press for him to tell her what happened, something he is extremely grateful for. At some point they lie down on her pillows and his tears peter out, though he doesn’t move or say anything. They stay in silence, his head on her chest and her arms wrapped around him for an indefinite amount of time.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She eventually asks the inevitable question, and Len shakes his head. “Ok,” she accepts, running her hand over his shoulder so that her palm can splay across his chest, letting him know that he doesn’t have to ask for permission to stay, that she understands why they’ve been in her room all this time and not his.

He appreciates that, more than he could ever tell her with words, so he doesn’t try. Instead he settles back against her, heaving out a heavy sigh of relief as his eyes drift closed and he lets sleep overtake him.


	7. Dirty Little Secret

Leonard wakes up at some point during the night, probably after only an hour or so of sleeping, still exhausted. He is also still sprawled on top of Sara’s blankets, her grip on him lax but still present as her hot breath tickles at the back of his neck. Despite the harsh events of the day he finds himself smiling, the feeling of waking up in a bed next to Sara is one that he never thought he would get to experience. Nothing’s changed between them, she still needs time to sort herself out and after today he could use some too. But they’re getting somewhere. They’re alive, for one thing, and they’re in the same place, fighting on the same side.

That’s all he needs for right now.

* * *

 

When Sara opens her eyes early in what passes for morning on the ship she registers two things, her arm hurts and the warm surface against her face is not her pillow. She doesn’t have time to panic before the memories of last night flood through her mind, the images of a trail of fire coming for her and then Leonard showing up at her door a few hours later completely broken playing out like a mental movie. She tightens her grip on Len instinctively, only realizing then that the reason her arm hurts is because it’s still pinned under his shoulders. But her need to hold him closer stir’s him, granting her some relief as he turns and then some disappointment when his eyes blink open; she hadn’t meant to wake him.

They remain in silence for a few seconds, taking in the sight of each other because this is most certainly a line neither of them thought they would be crossing any time soon.

Eventually Sara reclaims her arms and bends it so that she can pillow her own head with it.

“I meant what I said yesterday,” she practically murmurs, “I love you, but… I still need some time to figure myself out.”

He smiles at her, soft and genuine. “After yesterday, I think I could use some time for that myself.” He says before his expression grows just a touch more serious. “You aren’t the only whose changed over the past six years. I didn’t want to admit it but part of the reason I’m here is to stop Savage, which would not have been the case six years ago.”

She can’t help the little smile that crosses her face at that. It’s true, granted, six years ago he wouldn’t have come on this ship for anything, except possibly to drag her off it. But he wouldn’t have stayed.

His smile returns then, it’s an expression she really could get used to seeing on him. “I love you too.” He promises, “Now, we should probably get up before everyone else does and sees me coming out of your room.”

She chuckles at that, maybe one of the first real bouts of amusement she’s felt in a long time. “Yeah we should,” she agrees, though neither of them moves right away.

They should go, they both know it, but just being together, both of them safe and sound, is something they have never had the chance to do; not really. There is still a danger here, they’re still on the mission and things could still go wrong, but for five minutes they aren’t. For five minutes they can hide in this room and not worry about someone finding them and reporting to Ivo, or about some temporal bounty hunter shooting at them. They don’t have to worry about Savage, Slade, or anyone else. Even if they both need to deal with some things before they can really be together, they can still stay in bed and ignore the outside world for five more minutes.

 

* * *

 

Five minutes, of course, is only that, and then it’s back to reality. Rip lands the ship in Harmony Falls Oregon 1958. It’s a storybook town of white picket fences and homecoming games being plagued by a mystery serial killer, most likely Savage. All the makings of a classic horror film really, right down to being home to the district insane asylum. With Kendra and Raymond playing house just down the street from Savage it’s the final ingredient in a recipe for disaster, so Leonard really doesn’t need the harsh scrutiny he’s been getting from Jax over Mick.

But, alas, things never can be easy for him.

“Something you both have in common,” the kid snarks after Len says that all he and Rip have been able to find here is that Savage is very good at making people disappear.

They’re in a semi-team meeting, only The Professor and Sara are absent because they’re still scoping out the insane asylum, and everyone in the room turns to look at Jax.

“What, we’re just gonna pretend like none of this happened?” He asks, leaning forward to stare Leonard down. “That Mick Rory wasn’t a part of our team?” He goes on, accusation clear in his voice. “If you could just ice your best friend like that, I hate to think what you could do to us.”

There’s a beat, like they’re waiting for Leonard to defend himself and his actions. He won’t, the words wash right over him because they aren’t true. He didn’t ice Mick, but he needs the team to believe that he did; even if it destroys their trust in him.

“Right now we need to stay focused on the mission,” Kendra says when it’s clear that he isn’t going to say anything, trying to rein in the tension in the room.

“It seems like Savage is going to be busy with his little cocktail party,” Rip quickly jumps in, eyeing Kendra and Ray. “Whilst you two keep an eye on him Sara and Martin will have the opportunity to find out what he’s doing at the hospital.”

Ah, Leonard thinks to himself, so Sara and Stein are working the night shift now. Which means that tonight’s crew on the ship is going to consist of Jax, Hunter, and himself.

Peachy.

 

* * *

 

She should not be doing this.

That thought has been coursing through her mind on a loop ever since they started their cover, and only partly because playing his assistant means feeding Stein’s already over-inflated ego. The other part is, well, her.

Lindsay, a not unattractive nurse working alongside her, who also happens to be a closeted lesbian subjected to a very self-entitled male doctor’s constant flirting. Coming to Lindsay’s defense by slamming a drawer into the doctor’s backside was only natural, as was asking her for a tour of the building; she is supposed to be snooping around, after all. Though sitting here at an abandoned cafeteria table with the woman in question, a nearly finished tequila bottle between them, is starting to feel like cheating.

She keeps telling herself that she and Leonard aren’t actually together, that they literally agreed just this morning that they both need some time to deal with their personal baggage before they can even think about becoming a couple. Plus it’s not like she could have a serious relationship with Lindsay even if she wanted one. Stein has already reminded her once that she is going to fly off on a time ship sooner rather than later, leaving her new friend behind. But none of that discredits the fact that Lindsay could stand to have a little hope in her life, that she deserves to be validated. That-

“Sara?”

She has to blink herself back to reality, “Huh?” She asks, an expression of mild concern on Lindsay’s face.

The other woman looks like she is about to simply repeat whatever she said, but then she bites her lip, thinking. “You’ve been so many places, maybe the question I should be asking is what brought you to Harmony Falls?”

Well, that’ll teach her to zone out.

“Job opening,” she shrugs, “Dr. Stein likes the small towns, so here we are.” She can feel Lindsay’s eyes on her as she takes another shot of the tequila, and can see them soon as she puts down her paper cup.

“And you just followed him?” The other woman asks, very skeptically. “You’re so bold and unafraid, you don’t strike me as the kind of nurse to just follow a doctor wherever he decides to go.”

“Well having a job does help put bread on the table,” she comments, “No, it’s not always that simple. I don’t exactly have roots anywhere, and while Stein can sometimes be tough to get along with, we both got in this field to help people. He thought people could use help here and, well with all the disappearances and murders this town has had lately, can’t say I wasn’t intrigued.”

Lindsay actually laughs at that, albeit nervously, but she doesn’t seem like guilty nervous, so any potential crisis has probably been adverted for now. “I haven’t seen anything related to that around here, those poor people.” Her words are somber, her face calming, and Sara doesn’t say anything; but instead let’s the moment of silence happen.

“So you have a girlfriend?” She asks once the moment feels like it’s up, and God she really should not be doing this.

Lindsay looks… well, not entirely surprised by the sudden change in topic but… apprehensive, about answering the question.

She can work with that.

“I just mean it seems pretty obvious you’re not into guys,” she remarks plainly, while Lindsay looks away as if checking to make sure the coast is clear. “Um I…. I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She stammers, even though they are alone and this is far before the time of widespread security cameras.

And, suddenly, this situation feels very familiar.

 

* * *

 

_She jumped away from the raven-haired woman, almost like she had burned her. She had, in a way, but not physically or, at least, not literally. Her chest had felt as though it was on fire, not that she minded. No, wait, she did mind. This wasn’t… She wasn’t… Gah, she was a mess._

_Then, of course, the pain was quickly turning from good to bad. Nyssa was staring at her, looking a little surprised and very hurt. Sara didn’t like that look on her face, and she hated that she was the one to put it there. The tingling on her lips was fading, and she wanted nothing more than to recapture Nyssa’s lips and bring it back._

_No, that’s not true. She did want something more. She wanted many, many things more. Not things like the feel of her trainer’s gloved hands on her waist, or the earthy/oily scent of her hair filling her nose, or the rough texture of her shawl under her hands-_

_God damn it._

_“I…” She finally, finally, managed to stutter out. “I’m… I’m sorry. I don’t… I’m not… I-” She wasn’t sure why exactly her eyes had started flitting around in every which direction. They had been alone in the training chamber and many of the League’s other assassins had been off on missions. Nanda Parbat was empty save for a few new recruits and their trainers, the chances of them being caught had been low as they could be._

_Nyssa laughed. Nyssa, the woman who rarely ever smiled in those days unless somebody’s ass was on the floor before her, broke out in a completely genuine grin and laughed._

_“Alright,” she had said, “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. Although…” She had taken a step forward as she trailed off, and her smile turned coy, a sight more familiar to Sara at the time and yet still had managed to put her even more on edge. “I am pretty good at keeping secrets.”_

_It should not have made her feel better._

_Just five seconds before she had wanted to deny it, but the idea of telling someone this secret she hardly knew she had, and that someone accepting it, had suddenly been all too calming._

* * *

 

“Ok,” Sara says, deciding to echo the words that were spoken to her so long ago. “We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But, just so you know… I’m really good at keeping secrets.”

Lindsay gives her a little, crooked, smile at that. Her mouth opens a few times without words coming out at first but Sara remains patient, she’d had a similar reaction when Nyssa used these words on her.

Then, when she finally did find the words, she had started talking about Leonard and how much she still loved him.

God, she really shouldn’t be here right now.

“Funny you should say that. I… did, kiss a girl, once.” Lindsay admits, her voice so anxious, but so relieved at the same time. “I didn’t think that made me a… well, you know…”

“A lesbian?” She knows this isn’t funny, but her entire voice is giddy with excitement as she finishes the sentence for the other woman, whose small smile grows to match.

“What?” Lindsay asks, almost whispers, her eyes bright.

“It’s not a bad word,” Sara promises her, and Lindsay does take a second to marvel at that, before her face falters.

“Well it is around here.”

“Well,” Sara huffs, “Good thing I’m not from around here.”

Lindsay smiles at that, happy, and suddenly Sara can’t question any more why she is having this conversation. Lindsay isn’t going to get this from anyone in this time, confirmation that there is absolutely nothing wrong with her, and she deserves to have it.

Of course, all good things must come to an end, and the sound of Stein clearing his throat over in the doorway behind her brings about this one.

 

* * *

 

Jax keeps mostly to himself while the rest of the team is out, which Leonard supposes is a good thing. At least he doesn’t have to spend the night on the receiving end of the kid’s judgmental stare, and at least he knows Jax is among those who truly believes he killed Mick, something he wasn’t expecting after their little side trip to 2007. It stings a little, if he’s being honest, as Jax is one of the more tolerable people on this ship. But it’s necessary, or, so he keeps telling himself.

Anyway, the night on the ship is uneventful; the rest of their crew filing back in at some point after those who stayed behind went to sleep. Of course Leonard isn’t actually asleep when he hears the flurry of returned voices out in the hallway, but he is relaxing in his room. They sound like they’re all in one piece, no need for him to go out there and ask about their night.

He needs to keep up the illusion that he doesn’t care, after all.

When morning comes he is the first into the galley, as usual, and is quickly joined by Sara. They nod in greeting to each other as she sets about making her coffee and he is about to ask her how the nurse gig is working out when Stein comes in.

“Ah, Miss Lance, will you be bringing a coffee to your new girlfriend this morning?” He asks; his voice coated with condescending judgment that Leonard only pays a little attention to. The rest of his attention is, understandably, focused on Sara.

Sara, by the way, is glaring daggers at Martin and when the scientist exits the room, leaving his own coffee behind because his life certainly isn’t worth the risk of stepping closer to her in order to grab it, she gives a sigh.

“He’s full of crap,” she says, and Leonard waits a beat before saying anything. He uses that beat, as well as a long sip of his own coffee, to carefully think through his options here.

“So you don’t have a new girlfriend?” He’s careful to keep is tone curious, but not angry. It isn’t like they’re together, even if, up until this moment, he had been under the impression that they were going to be once they figure out their personal issues.

“No,” she assures him, “Just a friend, who could stand to have someone tell her that it’s ok for her to like women.”

He nods, he trusts her and he’s sure she knows it, but it still helps that she steps closer until she is standing right in front of him with a soft smile on her face.

“I meant what I said,” she reminds him. Whether she’s talking about loving him, needing time, or both he isn’t sure. But it still brings a smile to his face.

“I know,” he promises, “Now, you might want to catch up with Stein, can’t be late on your second day.”

She smirks at him, amused, and then heads out.

 

* * *

 

Sara can’t help the smile on her face as she goes about snooping around the hospital. She makes sure to act a little more pissed off when she’s around Stein, as he had no business making up stories about her having a “new girlfriend” but at the same time she’s almost grateful that he did, or at least that he did so in front of Leonard. It makes things so much easier to know that he understands she isn’t trying to pursue a relationship with Lindsay, but is only encouraging her to accept herself.

So, when the other woman finally comes in for her evening shift and Sara comes across her alone in an office, she doesn’t hesitate to saunter right in.

Lindsay smiles at her, and it does make her blush. It’s nice to have someone in her life, if only for a couple of days, who doesn’t know about any of the dark things she’s done. Lindsay doesn’t see her damage or her scars, just her light.

She walks over and sits down on the edge of the desk her friend is using; content to just look at her and revel in the way she is being looked at. For the first time since signing up for this mission it actually feels like she is making a difference.

Speaking of making a difference, she does still have a job to do here.

“Don’t you ever get freaked out?” She asks, “Being in an insane asylum by yourself, in the middle of the night?”

“Freaked out?” Lindsay asks with a shake of her head and that crooked smile of hers. “No. Lonely, yes.”

Sara does smile at her, though for the first time it’s just a hair forced. That wasn’t meant to be a come on, and while she can’t deny that Lindsay is attractive she is also very aware of the fact that she’s going to run right into Leonard’s arms as soon as they both get their issues under some semblance of control, as soon as they think they’re in a place a relationship might work. Even if Leonard weren’t a factor, a potential relationship with Lindsay just isn’t practical, and a hook-up wouldn’t be fair to anyone.

The only smart thing to do here would be to stop this conversation right now.

But, she let’s Lindsay continue.

“Actually there is one place in the hospital that scares me,” apparently there was another smart option here.

“Dr. Knox’s restricted wing?” She asks, and again Lindsay nods. “Do you know what he’s doing to the patience down there?” She presses, hoping the question comes off as nothing more than genuine curiosity. After all, a restricted wing in an insane asylum can be intriguing even if you don’t know the doctor running it is really an immortal psychopath, right?

“No,” Lindsay answers, a twinge of sadness barely detectable in her voice. “I don’t like to think about it.”

“What do you like to think about?” Sara asks the question with a tiny smirk on impulse. She was so close, she was in the clear, all she had to do was suggest they break some rules and go exploring. But, instead, that little nugget came out of her mouth. Now she’s back to square one and back to being in trouble, and this time she can’t save herself because Lindsay gets up and kisses her.

It’s a soft kiss, full of trepidation and uncertainty. Sara returns it for a second, but as Lindsay’s confidence grows Sara feels her own diminishing. Her lips are tingling, slightly chalky from the other woman’s lipstick rubbing off on her. She isn’t kissing back anymore, her head is screaming for her to run. Her thoughts go to Leonard, yes, but also to herself. Her heart feels as though it could hammer out of her chest and her fingers curl against the rim of the desk to keep her from running and giving the absolute wrong impression. True, she doesn’t want what Lindsay does, but she also doesn’t want to scare her by literally running away.

Still, soon as Lindsay pulls away, she can’t get to her feet quick enough.

“What’s wrong?” The other woman asks.

“Nothing,” Sara insists, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. This wasn’t supposed to happen, she wasn’t supposed to take it this far. Ok, she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t thought she might kiss Lindsay before the mission was out, but she hadn’t planned on this.

She hadn’t planned on the fear in her chest, the guilt in her stomach, or the panic in her head when the nurse’s lips met her own for the first and most likely last time.

“I just… I have to get back to work.” She stutters out an excuse and hurries out of the room before Lindsay can call her back, fully aware that by doing so she has seriously messed up everything; both for their chances at the mission, and for herself.


	8. Love Doctor Stein

The rest of her shift drags on painfully slowly. Sara avoids Lindsay as best she can and then remains quiet throughout the entire walk back to The Waverider, no matter how many times Stein asks her what’s happened. Of course this means that he just starts chastising her for whatever he _thinks_ has happened, and by the time they reach the ship she is pretty sure he’s convinced himself that she and Lindsay hooked up in the hospital supply closet. She keeps her mind off of what he’s saying by thinking about Leonard, about what she’s going to say to him, because she is NOT going to keep this from him. She hasn’t figured it out by the time they get back, but that’s ok, because The Waverider is decidedly empty.

“I wonder where they went?” Stein says more to himself than to her, but that doesn’t stop Gideon from chiming in.

“Captain Hunter and Mr. Snart went to check on Mr. Jackson, his communicator went offline.”

“Is he alright?” Stein questions; stopping in his tracks.

“I believe that is what The Captain and Mr. Snart went to determine.” Gideon snips, the tone that the AI takes enough to break through Sara’s distressed haze of thoughts and make her smile.

She heads off to her room while Stein continues to argue with Gideon, her mind still reeling. She changes out of her nurse’s uniform and back into her normal clothes, smiling at the familiar feel of her black jeans and her loose shirt. Sitting down cross-legged on her bed she changes the projection screen on her wall into a mirror so that she can fix her hair. She pulls a stupid amount of bobby pins out of her bun, and then combs her fingers through her hair before reaching for her brush. She’s still running different scenarios through her head about telling Leonard what happened. She doesn’t think he’ll be angry, or at least, she hopes he won’t be. Lindsay was the one to kiss her, and she barely kissed back, so he shouldn’t be angry.

Then again, she did kiss back.

She hears a stampede of footsteps hurrying down the hall outside her room, Rip’s voice loudly exclaiming something, so she quickly finishes her hair and goes to check on the sudden commotion.

By the time she catches up with them Rip is asking for Gideon to call the entire team to the library.

“What happened?” She asks, coming up alongside Leonard in the hall.

“Apparently Jax ran into his date’s boyfriend and it did not go well.” He explains, a protective snarl in his voice that she knows all too well. “We’re still working on finding him.” He glances at her out of the side of his eye, and he must see that the look on her face is nothing short of distraught. “Are you ok?”

“Fine,” she more or less lies, in light of what he’s said it’s obvious that now is not the time to tell him about Lindsay. “Just worried about Jax.”

It’s evident in the careful look he gives that he doesn’t believe her, but he doesn’t press, and they join the rest of the team in the office.

Leonard takes up vigil on a stool over in the corner, one foot resting on another stool just a few feet away. She stands on his side of the table, leaned up against a locker that Rip keeps two odd looking helmets resting on top of. Not too far from him, but not too close either.

Apparently he wasn’t kidding when he said that the encounter with Betty’s boyfriend “did not go well”, as Rip informs them all that she is currently in the med-bay recovering from the talon scratches her now hawk-mutant lover left in her neck. Stein heads off to the med-bay after that reveal to start on finding a cure for Tommy. Meanwhile Kendra and Ray fall into a lovers quarrel over the proposal for her to go into the asylum after Savage now that they have a dagger that can kill him in their possession. Kendra wins, of course, and so Sara brings it upon herself to go inform Stein of the plan.

He’s typing on a tablet when she arrives, and she doesn’t pay much mind to the bloody teenager lying unconscious in the second med seat.

“Any updates?” She asks.

“We’re making progress,” Stein replies, and he sounds hopeful enough that she believes him.

“Well in the meantime we need to get ready to back Kendra up, she’s going into the asylum to meet Savage tonight.”

“Another opportunity for you to see Nurse Carlisle.” He says, and how he can sound so smug and so condescending all at once is lost on Sara but she almost doesn’t care.

She sighs, a feeling of complete dread suddenly overtaking her. “Yeah,” she grumbles, “And apologize.” She turns away from him, slowly walking herself over to the first chair, though she really should just head for the door.

“I warned you, Miss Lance,” Stein says in his best “holier than thou” tone, “Rushing a repressed woman from the 1950’s into the freewheeling, sexual morays of the 21stcentury-”

God, she can’t listen to this speech again.

“Actually I was the one who freaked out.” She finally admits as she lowers herself to sit on the edge of the chair. It does feel good to get that off her chest, and the stunned look on The Professor’s face as he realizes he’s wrong certainly doesn’t hurt.

“Oh,” he manages to say, but nothing else.

“Ever since I…” Yep, Sara suddenly realizes as she tries to think of how to phrase this, she is really having this conversation. “Got brought back to life,” she finally decides on, “I haven’t really experienced much in the way of feelings and then, when Lindsay kissed me…”

“It was like you were being kissed for the first time.” Stein finishes for her, showing no reaction to the news that it was Lindsay who kissed her. “How romantic.”

“Feels more like terrifying,” she quickly corrects, “You see that’s the thing that sucks about feelings. You realize how much you could get hurt… or, hurt someone else.”

Stein raises his eyebrows at that, but lets the silence they have fallen into drag on for a minute.

“I know that I’ve been discouraging you from liberating Nurse Carlisle,” he finally says, taking a few steps closer to her and so she scoots over enough to give him room to sit, something he takes advantage of. “But… your heart is in the right place, Sara.” He promises her, “And who knows? Perhaps Lindsay will go on to live a happy and fulfilled life with a wonderful woman because of what you’ve done.”

The words don’t do much to bring a smile to her face like she’s sure he’s going for, and she toys with one of her rings as she debates whether she wants to admit what’s really on her mind or not.

She does.

“It isn’t Lindsay I’m worried about hurting.” She reveals, and for the second time in five minutes she is granted the privilege of seeing the great Professor Stein at a loss for words.

She allows herself to smirk for a second at the sight, before her frown returns and she sets her gaze ahead. “Even before the pit, I wasn’t great with relationships or other peoples feelings. You know I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve ever had a relationship that didn’t involve cheating; even Nyssa and Ollie overlapped a little.” She knows he doesn’t know who either of those people are, not really, not to her, but she says it anyway. “Now… Even though Lindsay kissed me, it’s not like I didn’t lead her there. I don’t know, I just feel like I thought I needed some time before jumping into a relationship, yet there I go flirting with Lindsay.”

She can almost see the gears turning in Steins head, probably trying to figure out whether she is speaking hypothetically or not, as he doesn’t know anything about her history with Leonard. Maybe she should tell him, maybe that would make this easier, or maybe it wouldn’t make a difference at all. Maybe-

“You met my younger self back in 1975,” Stein finally interrupts her thoughts, “Now, I had three PHD’s and was a Professor at Ivy University teaching students hardly any younger than myself, some even older. I had my share of flings, sure, but my work was far too important to me to allow time for something as committed as a serious relationship.” He lets it hang there for a minute, as though he’s waiting for her to ask him what changed.

But she already has a guess.

“But…” He picks up when she remains quiet, “Then I met Clarissa. At first yes, I did resist the idea of being in a relationship with her, because I didn’t think I was ahead enough in my research. The point is, Ms. Lance, that love often finds you before you have everything in your own head sorted out. You just have to add the feelings to the mess and trust that in the end everything is going to work out.”

She hums with thought, a small smirk coming across her face at his words.

“Didn’t peg you as someone to put so much faith into the unknown.” She says and he chuckles.

“Yes well, the world is proving to be full of unknown wonders lately.”

 

* * *

 

In going after Savage at the asylum they manage to also find Jax, and the other missing kids, who have all been turned into mutant hawk monsters.

Peachy.

They manage to get Jax unconscious and back to the ship, though for Leonard this all comes with a rather nauseating amount of quality time spent with Stein. He stays in the med bay whilst The Professor works on a cure, though he isn’t exactly sure why. He tells himself it’s because he wants to make sure the antidote actually works, though it isn’t like he understands enough of the science to actually call Stein on any mistakes.

In truth, he doesn’t have anywhere better to be, and at least old silvertop is being quiet.

“I had an interesting conversation with Ms. Lance earlier tonight.”

Well, all good things must come to an end.

“Is that so?” Leonard asks, raising an eyebrow with partial interest.

Stein looks over his shoulder for a second, as if to confirm that he’s listening, and then returns to his work.

“Apparently after Nurse Carlisle kissed her, Ms. Lance began having doubts in her ability maintain a committed relationship.”

Well, Leonard can’t deny that that is actually interesting.

“What do you mean?” He asks, trying to sound disinterested as ever.

Stein looks over his shoulder again, but quickly returns to his work, too quickly for Leonard to determine if he’s suspicious or not.

“Well, apparently, she has cheated in the past. I think she was concerned that she may never be mature enough to be in a serious relationship. I told her that no one is ever truly ready for something such as that, but it’s something that one must take on when the opportunity presents itself; regardless of fears that might be feeding self-doubts.”

Len considers that, almost wanting to ask how Sara took this advice. It’s almost comical that Stein apparently had to tell her to take advantage of an opportunity when she can, considering that with their history the two oft hem should know that already. Yet they haven’t done it, they’ve agreed that they both need some time.

He could use some time, ideally, but things are hardly ever ideal in his life.

“Why are you telling me this?” He finally asks The Professor, who even with his back turned Leonard can tell is smirking.

“Well, since coming on board you and Miss Lance have spent a fair amount of time together, and it was obvious to me that she was thinking of someone during our conversation; so I thought you should know.” It isn’t good logic, but Leonard smirks anyway, finding that he doesn’t completely mind that The Professor has figured out he and Sara have feelings for each other.

Stein turns around then, a needle loaded with a blue liquid in one hand as he flicks it with the fingers of the other. “Done.”

 

* * *

 

After giving the mutant hawk kids his serum Stein is already back on the ship with the others, but Sara’s hung back a little ways. She knows she needs to talks to Leonard, but first she needs to talk to Lindsay and explain everything she possibly can.

She finds her in the nurse’s station, cleaning up the last of the mess made by last night’s attack. She just watches from the doorway for a few seconds, a small smile playing on her face.

“Hey,” she finally breathes, gaining the other woman’s attention. “How are our friends doing over in hall H?”  
“Whatever Dr. Stein gave them seems to have worked; back to normal.” Lindsay answers, her smile warm and grateful, not cold and angry like Sara had feared it might be. She walks inside, stopping just in front of the nurse.

“And you?” She asks, to which she gets a coy smirk in response.

“I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get fully back to normal.”

Now it’s Sara’s turn to smirk, “Good,” she says, before she grabs Lindsay by the face and brings her in for a kiss. This one is a little more heated than their last, but that’s ok. When the kiss does break Lindsay is smiling, and that’s all Sara wants.

“Thank you,” she says, “For rescuing me.”

Sara’s sure she’s talking about more than last night when she came charging in with her Bo and smacked one of the hawk creatures away.

“Well you rescued me first so, now we’re even.” Lindsay giggles at that, even if Sara’s sure she doesn’t completely understand it, before her smile turns sad.

“You have to go, don’t you?” She asks and Sara’s own face falls.

This is going to be the hard part.

“I have someone I really need to talk to,” she says, “I thought I needed time before being ready to have a relationship but, I don’t know, maybe I just need to jump in.”

She’s expecting Lindsay to be angry or hurt about being led on, even though that wasn’t what Sara had been trying to do, but the other woman smiles, reaching out and tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

“Go get ‘em.”

 

* * *

 

Leonard is waiting on the bridge for the others, ready as anyone to get out of this quaint little town. He’s also thinking about his conversation with Stein, or more specifically, Stein’s conversation with Sara.

It doesn’t bother him that she kissed Lindsay, no matter which of them instigated it. He knows Sara, and he knows that she’s smart enough to realize she could never be with Lindsay for longer than a day. He also knows that Sara is no longer the kind of person who would cheat; she was eighteen when that happened. Plus, technically, _she_ never cheated on anyone, to his knowledge anyway, but only helped Oliver cheat.

It’s a juvenile concern, in the scheme of things, and almost funny how after everything he and Sara have endured, both separately and together, either of them could be even slightly worried about cheating.

In other news, speaking of juvenile, Jax has entered the bridge. He’s walking slowly, eyes trained on the floor and hands shoved in his pockets.

“Well look who’s up and around,” Len drawls, choosing not to comment on how the kid should be resting, it’s not like he’s exactly likely to listen to him anyway.

“Hmm, yeah.” Jax acknowledges the comment, and then he finally looks up to make eye contact. “I owe you an apology.” He says, genuine guilt evident in his voice, something Leonard hasn’t heard directed towards him in a very long time, maybe not ever.

“Gray told me what happened back at the asylum. You had the chance to kill me and you didn’t.” Len looks away, because the damn kid looks like he is about to cry. “After last night I know enough about being a monster to know that you’re not one.”

“Stop, I’m getting misty eyed.” Len remarks, half sarcastic, as he rolls his neck in a vain attempt to come off as uncaring.

He still isn’t meeting the kid’s eyes, but he is paying enough attention to see that his attempt to shrug all this off hasn’t worked.

“I just want you to know I’m sorry.” He continues, “What happened with Rory, you were protecting us. That doesn’t make you a murderer, it makes you a part of this team.”

Len wants to say something to that, though he isn’t sure what. He almost wants to tell Jax that he didn’t murder Mick, even if that will reduce the kid’s new opinion of him. He’s considering it, when Stein walks in and starts nagging Jax about how he should be resting, as Leonard had wanted to earlier.

“Man I’m done laying around, I just want to get the hell out of Mayberry.” Jax says and that is a statement Len can get behind.

“We’re still waiting on Sara and the two lovebirds to get back,” he says, getting to his feet just as Rip joins them. “Seems they’ve taken quite a shine to 1958.”

The ship jolts before anybody has a chance to correct him.

“What on Earth?” Stein exclaims as they all scramble to get back on their feet, Leonard racing over to the center console where Rip is already asking Gideon for a status report.

The AI doesn’t need to say anything, she just plays them the security feed of the ship’s exterior and they see Chronos blasting away.

“Not this guy again,” Len sneers.

“Captain,” Gideon chimes, sounding as worried as a computer possibly can. “Chronos has breeched the starboard hatch.”

“HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?!” Stein demands, furious.

“Clearly he’s received some new toys from his Time Master friends since our last encounter.” Rip snarls immediately in response. “Gideon! Seal the bulkheads! Prepare-!” His orders are cut short by Chronos appearing before him, shooting him back with a blaster and then opening fire on the rest of them.

It’s chaos. Len fires at the bounty hunter while Jax and Stein make a break for it, likely headed outside so they can merge without the excess energy of the process blowing a hole in the ship. At least that’s where Len hopes they’re going; he’s not sure he can handle this maniac all on his own.

Rip gets back up and joins in the fray, so now it’s two on one but one is still doing more damage.

“Fall back!” Rip shouts after a shot from Chronos just narrowly misses his head, “Get to the jump ship!”

Leonard has never in his life been very good at following orders, but he’s willing to make an exception for that one. He takes off sprinting down the corridor of the ship, Stein and Jax in front of him and Rip behind him with Chronos giving chase.

Only it’s quiet behind him, and when Len looks back, Rip is the only one there.

“Are you sure it was a good idea leaving the terminator on the bridge?” He snarls, because there is no way in hell Rip actually managed to kill their armored pain in the ass with that pathetic little pistol blaster of his.

“Gideon has lock down protocols,” The Captain assures him.

“Which have been overwritten Captain,” The AI informs them, “Chronos is using superior Time Master technology. I cannot counter mind his orders.”

Just as she says it, as if on cue, The Waverider rattles in the way that it does when taking off.

Half their team is still off ship, the half that Sara’s with.

He can’t lose her again.

In what is likely his worst plan ever conceived Leonard tears through Jax and Stein, making a mad dash for an exit, any exit. The jump ship isn’t an option, so he’ll settle for jumping out a cargo door. It isn’t a good idea, but he won’t leave Sara behind again. Not after he just got her back, not after they made the stupid decision to wait to be together, not when Stein’s given him hope that she might be regretting that decision as much as he is, not-

The lights of the ship turn blue and it lurches, sending Len to the floor.

Chronos just made a time jump.


	9. Prisoners of Time

With a mumbled curse Len picks himself up off the ground. He can feel the tears already stinging in his eyes, the defeat of losing Sara yet again sinking in to his chest.

He narrows his eyes, he won’t accept that so easily, not again.

If Chronos really has overridden Gideon than the chances the jump ship will even open for him, let alone actually launch, are slim to none; otherwise he wouldn’t have just raced for a door to throw himself out of in the first place. But he’s out of options, so he has to try. He takes off back in the direction that he came from, turning sharply down the corridor that leads to the jump ship. He notices that he doesn’t pass any of the others as he does this, and he does hear what sounds like a minor explosion closer to the bridge. He knows he should help the team, but he keeps moving instead. They’ve already retreated from Chronos once today, and too many times to count since the mission started. So he pushes down the guilt and keeps on running, if he can get to Sara and the others they can figure out how to help Rip and both halves of Firestorm after.

He doesn’t have time to hope that those three will still be around to help, though, because he’s made it to the jump ship, and there’s Chronos blocking his path.

“Hello Snart,” The bounty hunter greets him before raising his gun, and then everything goes black.

 

* * *

 

“Where are they going?” Kendra asks after The Waverider vanishes from the sky, disappeared in a blip of a time jump.

“Better question,” Sara speaks up, “Why did they leave us?”

Nobody has an answer.

The three of them stare at the sky, as though not believing what they just saw. Sara is the first to tear her gaze from the gray expanse of clouds above them, looking instead at the trees with a desperate hope that Leonard will come waltzing out with some sort of explanation. He would never leave her here. Rip maybe; The Captain might have decided that with her bloodlust she serves as more of a liability than an asset. Maybe he’s been planning on leaving her behind for weeks already, ever since she lost control at the bank back in 1975. It could be that he’s just been looking for a good place to leave her, and after Lindsay, Stein convinced him that this would be as good a place as any.

But, if that’s the case, why not just bring her home? Making a time jump takes all of five minutes, surely if he wanted her gone he would just bring her back where he found her so that she doesn’t interfere with time.

Not to mention, Leonard isn’t anywhere to be found, and he would never abandon her like this.

“We just have to stay clam,” Ray says, the panic rising in his voice contradicting what he’s just said. “Wherever they time jumped, whenever, they’ll come back to this exact same moment.”

Sara isn’t so sure she believes that, and with a glance at Kendra she confirms that she shares the sentiment, but they agree to humor Ray. The seconds tick by, and the minutes. Soon they aren’t standing in a tight little group anymore, but rather have spread themselves out around the clearing. Kendra wanders a little up ahead, just in front of where The Waverider had been parked, never going another step forward like she’s afraid that if she does the ship will just magically reappear and crush her. Ray paces in little circles that grow bigger and less circular with every passing minutes, and Sara leans herself against the nearest tree.

Her thoughts sound like the broken record of a teenager caught in denial as they bounce off her skull; _“He wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t leave me.”_ Playing on a tortuous loop, always punctuated by the question she wishes she could stop thinking.

_“So why did he?”_

“They’re not coming back,” she finally says, because if she spends even another second trapped in her own mind she is going to scream. “Let’s go.”

With that she pushes herself off the tree trunk and starts walking towards the road they came from, it’ll be dark soon and even if the team _is_ coming back she doesn’t have any desire to be out in these freezing woods overnight.

“Look, as a former Eagle Scout with over a hundred merit badges, no big deal, the first rule of getting lost is to stay in the same place. That way you can be found.” Ray sounds like he’s trying to convince himself more than he is either of them.

“And as a former member of The League of Assassins the first rule when you’ve been attacked is to keep moving.” She sternly contradicts him. If they could do things his way she would be glad to, but it might not be safe. Rip wouldn’t leave Kendra behind, and Leonard wouldn’t leave her. Whatever reason the team did have for leaving it wasn’t of their own choosing.

“I think League Wisdom trumps The Eagle Scouts here,” Kendra tells Ray, her voice nothing short of apologetic. “Plus, Savage is still out there.”

Ray looks like he can’t believe what he’s hearing, “Guys, the team would not leave us marooned in 1958.”

“Except for that’s exactly what they did!” Sara argues, walking closer to Ray, fully aware of the tears forming in the corners of her eyes. “You have a time machine and you’re never late. They’re not coming back.” Ray’s face finally falls with that, Kendra’s too, and Sara is glad in a way because she doesn’t want to finish that sentence, to say what she’s been thinking ever since she came to the conclusion that the team might have been attacked.

That there might not be a team anymore.

She walks away first, unsure and uncaring if Ray and Kendra are going to follow. She almost wishes they wouldn’t, at least not right away. All she wants is to duck into the nearest bush and cry. But she hears footsteps behind her, which means they’re following. So she sniffles and wipes her eyes quickly as though the tears are nothing more than stray snowflakes.

She’s going to have to be strong a little longer.

Or, a lot longer.

They get out of Harmony Falls, as the last thing that they need is Savage breathing down their necks. They find jobs and rent a small apartment in Hub City, she would’ve liked to go further but Ray wasn’t too keen on leaving Harmony Falls at all, so it’s a compromise between there and the opposite end of the country. As the days turn into weeks Sara can feel herself losing her mind. Living alone with Ray and Kendra is nauseating, and working as a waitress in this backwater time is almost just as bad. Dragging herself back into the apartment after yet another nightmare of a shift she finds Ray hunched over his supposed time signal with Kendra practically glued to his side. She almost doesn’t close the door behind her, almost turns right around and walks out, but then Kendra looks up and sees her, so she has to keep pretending.

“I’m gonna shower,” she announces in the tired way that she always does when returning from work. Kendra nods, concern lining her features, but she doesn’t say anything.

Once she’s alone behind the bathroom door Sara lets out a low, shuddering breath. There’s a sob in the back of her throat, like there always is whenever she walks through that front door. Watching Kendra and Ray so in love all the time, all while growing more and more convinced that Leonard is dead with each passing day, is starting to wear her down. She’s quick to turn on the shower and strip out of her uniform, needing the sound of the water to drown out that of her quiet sobs. She scrubs away the dirt from her skin and the sweat from her hair, strangled gasps coming from her mouth as she does so. Eventually, once she’s cried as much as she’s willing for tonight and cleaned the grime of the diner off herself, she turns the water off and steps out of the shower. As she dries herself off she takes notice of her scars, and how this place doesn’t really allow for them to be joined by many other cuts and bruises.

She doesn’t miss that, not really, but she does miss fighting. She misses the action, and they’ve already established that picking fights with jerks in the diner isn’t a good substitute.

Ray and Kendra don’t pay her any attention when she crosses the apartment in nothing but a towel, too wrapped up in their own world. The tears are already back in her eyes when she closes her bedroom door, the sounds of her roommates giggling lovingly at each other driving her mad. In a sudden flurry of anger she pulls a bag that she bought at an army surplus store out from under her bed, throwing a few clothes into it while simultaneously scrubbing at her eyes. However, she stops when the bag is half full, the realization of what she’s doing filling her with an overwhelming sensation of guilt. She can’t do this. Savage is still out there, and considering Ray has torn apart his suit to make that stupid time beacon she is going to need to be the one to protect them when he comes back.

Sniffing up the last of her tears she changes into her pajamas, tossing the open but still packed bag to rest in the corner by her door.

Another week passes and every day she thinks about taking that bag and leaving before her friend’s even wake up, but she never does. It’s late at night when she’s playing a board game with Kendra, The Game of Life, and suddenly Ray’s excited exclamation of “Aha!” interrupts her turn.

“The time beacon radio is officially complete.” He announces, so of course she has to fight to keep from rolling her eyes. Kendra was supposed to have talked with him three days ago about his unhealthy obsession with that thing, so she had hoped his fiddling with it all night had been taking it apart, not finishing it.

“Great,” Kendra indulges, getting up from the couch and following him to the little hallway where his machine has claimed residence.

Sara follows too, going against her better judgment and humoring one last shred of hope that the team, that Leonard, is still out there.

“Here we go.” Ray says as he turns a knob on the device. “Hope there’s a spot on that game that says, “Return to The Waverider”, because that’s what’s about to happen.”

That isn’t what happens, of course. Ray turns the beacon on and it almost immediately bursts into flames.

He turns it off and the fire goes out, which is a plus Sara guesses, but there is still a cloud of smoke in their hallway.

“I just have to fix a few of the kinks.” Ray apologizes, “The next version will be much less explosive.”

Oh that is it.

“Next version?” Sara asks; she can’t do this anymore. She can’t keep humoring Ray and his delusional fantasies of rescue. She settles her gaze onto Kendra, “I thought you said you were going to say something to him?”

“Say what?” Ray asks before Kendra can even make an excuse, and Sara sighs.

“That your beacon is a waste of time.” She tells the hopeful man firmly, and suddenly she can feel her walls breaking. She can’t listen to him for another second, can’t hear him theorize about what might be wrong with Gideon’s systems or why the three of them might have been left for their own safety for whatever reason. She can’t do it.

She can’t keep hearing the lie that they’re coming back; she can’t keep hearing that Leonard might be out there.

“They’re not coming back, Ray.” She insists, walking over to stand just in front of him. “And it’s not because The Waverider is broken, or they’re lost, or they can’t find us, or whatever. It’s because they’re dead. And the sooner that you accept that, the sooner you can move on.” She stops, hearing her own words, and starts to head towards her room. “The sooner we can all move on.”

“So what?” Ray calls after her, “We’re supposed to give up?”

“On being rescued, yeah.” She snaps; she can’t do this anymore. So she shakes her head and goes to her room, pulling her bag from where it’s been lying in the corner waiting.

“Sara, what are you doing?” Kendra asks when she hefts the bag onto a chair.

“I can’t stay here, I need to find somewhere I belong.”

“Sara wait, you can’t go.” Ray says it like her moving about the living room and grabbing whatever little things belong to her, shoving them in the bag, is all a joke.

“Savage is still out there. Don’t draw undue attention on yourselves.” The words sound more like an order rather than advise coming out of her mouth but she can’t bring herself to care. She shoulders her bag despite Kendra pleading with her, though she does stop in the door.

“Look, you two have each other.” She reminds them, “Most people, in any time period, aren’t that lucky.” She isn’t that lucky. “Take care.”

With that she closes the door and heads down the hall, unsure how to feel about it when neither of them chase after her.

* * *

 

When Leonard wakes up he does his best to blink away the headache he can feel coming on. He sits up, though something tugs on his wrists and he notices it’s a pair of handcuffs. He groans and looks around, unsure if he should be relieved or terrified by how like and yet unlike prison this place appears.

It looks like some distorted version of The Waverider, lit with an eerie green that almost makes it appear haunted. The sound of loud, clunking footsteps grabs his attention and has him looking over his shoulder, at which point he decides that he should definitely be terrified.

Chronos his coming.

The bulky… whatever Chronos is, walks by him without so much as a glance and then takes up a silent vigil at the ship’s controls.

“So uh…” He awkwardly trails, trying to figure out how to play this. “What’s so special about me?” He decides to ask, noticing that there is a distinct lack of an Englishman or a Professor with sticks up their respective asses, as well as an angry kid who seems to have a habit of being kidnapped.  “I mean aside from my sparkling personality. Back on The Waverider you could’ve taken your boy Rip, but you took me instead. Why?”

He gives it a second, and then two, but Chronos remains stoic.

“Hey, if you’re gonna kill me you could at least tell me what’s going on.”

This time Chronos moves, if only enough to turn halfway around.

“You should’ve figured it out by now.” The bounty hunter spits, and Len will admit that isn’t exactly the response he was expecting. He combs quickly back through his memories, trying to think of something that might motivate Chronos to take him as opposed to the rogue Captain his bosses want dead, but he’s coming up with nothing.

He’s about to say as much, when Chronos reaches to remove his helmet.

And suddenly Leonard can’t remember how to breathe, because it’s no longer a faceless lackey who he’s talking to.

It’s Mick.

“After all,” Chron- Mick, rumbles, voice much quieter and more menacing than Leonard has ever been used to hearing. “I am supposed to be the dumb one.”

Leonard Snart is not a man who can often be found at a loss for words, but as he stares into the frighteningly cold eyes of a man who was once his hotheaded partner he finds his mouth opening and closing mutely.

“How?” he finally manages to get out, but Mick doesn’t answer, just keeps staring him down; and it ignites a rage in his chest.

He had a plan. To get Mick away from the mission for everyone’s sake and then go back for him when it’s all over. This shouldn’t be happening, Mick shouldn’t be this… this Time Master dog. He had a plan.

How could it all go so wrong?

“I think I deserve to know what the hell is going on here!” He shouts, shaking his cuffed hands around the handrail like a child throwing a tantrum. But Mick, in a very un-Mick like fashion, remains stoic.

“You deserve nothing,” he says simply.

“Says the man who sold us out to the pirates!” Leonard shouts back at him, “When I dropped you off in that forest I meant to kill you, that was the plan!” He doubts that’s going to change anything; that this hardened, twisted, emotionless version of his oldest friend is going to take pity on him for apparent mercy. For the record his words are true, he did intend to kill Mick when he walked out of the team meeting, but that only lasted about five seconds.

“You should’ve stuck with the plan and done me a favor.”

The words hit hard, but Len is far too angry, and frankly scared, to let it show.

“I may not have trusted you on the ship with the team but I always, _always,_ was coming back for you!” He shouts, still shaking against his restraints.

“Seems like one of us lost track of time.” Mick rumbles and Len feels his heart sink.

No. He wouldn’t… he would never just _forget_ to go back.

But, if there’s one thing he’s learned in the past decade, it’s that he doesn’t always get to save the people he loves.

“Well,” he finally shudders, “How long did you-?”

“By the time they found me I’d nearly lost my mind!” Mick explodes, finally, but his voice quiets quickly. “I was so weak. I was strangling rats to survive.”

“When who found you?” Len isn’t sure why he asks; he already has a sickening feeling about it.

“The Time Masters,” Mick answers, his gaze suddenly distant, and then like the words are some sort of anchor he straightens up and starts making his way back to the controls of this ship.

His ship, Leonard realizes, like a rock has sunk into his stomach. Mick’s in charge of this ship, using it to hunt and kill people all throughout history at The Time Master’s commands; and all because he needed to be in control.

Mick explains about the Time Masters and this place called The Vanishing Point, enunciating all of his words in a perfect way that Leonard has never known him to care enough for.

He needs to focus on something other than what Mick’s been doing and how it’s his fault, so he latches onto that.

“And uh when exactly did your new friends give you the, uh, lobotomy?”

Mick almost looks amused by the question, but pissed wins out and he marches back over.

“You think I was onto you and your friends because the Time Master’s made me?” He questions, “They barely had to ask.”

That does it.

He can’t keep the tears out of his eyes any longer, though he won’t allow them to fall. He tries to blink them away when Mick crouches back down to his level, but it’s no use.

“You spent six years mourning a girl, then she turned up alive, so I told you to go after her, and you repaid me by trading me for her!” He snaps, taking in a breath to regain his composure. “You could’ve had it all Leonard, but you decided you wanted more; you wanted to save the world with her.” He saunters back over to his holo-table and brings up a picture of Sara.

The picture is an old one, taken before Sara ever graduated high school. In it she’s smiling, looking so carefree and happy that it makes his heart clench.

“You betrayed me Leonard, left me to rot, now you’re going to know how it feels.” Mick informs him, “You and me, we’re going to take a little trip back in time, maybe to that boat you never shut up about, and I’m going to kill Sara in front of you. Then we’re gonna go back in time again, and do it again. And again, and again, and again, until we make our way so far back that she doesn’t even know who you are or why you’re begging for me to stop as I slit her throat. Then, we’re gonna do it again.”

Len jostles his handcuffs against the rail one more time, but it does nothing. He’s going to be sick if he doesn’t get out of here soon, if he can’t at least talk some sense into Mick.

“Sir,” this ship’s AI speaks up before another word can be said, “It seems that The Waverider has touched down in Nanda Parbat 1960.”

“Chart a course,” Mick readily commands, looking straight ahead. “I used to think the most beautiful thing on Earth was fire,” he muses aloud. “Now I know, it’s vengeance.”


	10. Something Old, Something New

Sara’s eyelids fly open as her ears process the scuffling sound of feet coming towards her room. On instinct she forces her body to relax and closes her eyes while slipping on hand under her spare pillow to grasp the knife that lies there. She listens carefully to the footsteps, slow and quiet, like the intruder actually thinks they are being discrete. She doesn’t actually expect for her door to open, but it does, ever so silently. She doesn’t so much as flinch, remaining calm and relaxed and giving off the illusion of sleep. She listens as the footsteps make their way ever closer to her bed, until the new presence is looming over her. She’s waiting for a blade, a hand, some sort of attack.

She isn’t waiting for her name.

“Sara,” the voice is low, deep and unfamiliar, yet there is something in it that pulls at the corners of her memory.

She rolls over in the blink of an eye with a snarl, her knife going straight for the intruder’s throat. She stops herself, though, the sight of the man at her bedside like a bucket of cold water splashing over her. She knows him, memories that she’s tried hard to push down for the past two years bubbling back up to the forefront of her mind.

“It’s me.” He says as different images still flash through her mind. A rooftop, a bar, a bank, a meddling crook, card games in a cargo bay, Russia, Outer Space, Harmony Falls, and an empty field with The Waverider flying away.

“Rip?” She asks, his name foreign on her lips after all this time.

“I’m here to bring you back,” he says, ushering for her to get up and follow him. She complies, feeling as though she is moving through a haze. “I’m so sorry that it’s taken me so long.”

“Who else is here?” It’s the only thing she can think to ask, though she isn’t entirely sure if she’s asking for herself or on behalf of The League.

“The entire team. Well, except for Mr. Snart. I’ll explain back at the-”

She’s stopped listening after “except for Mr. Snart” and made up her mind about why she was asking. She takes his arm and flips him over her shoulder, placing her knife to his throat as she shouts to alert everyone else that there is an intruder present and that Ra’s al Ghul needs to be protected.

Her mind is still caught in a haze, but there is one thing that is clear to her. Leonard is gone, this life is all that she has left; she needs to protect it.

 

* * *

 

Leonard needs to think fast. They’ve just landed, and he’s trying not to focus on the fact that they’ve landed in 1960, two years after Sara was left, not to mention that they’re in Nanda Parbat of all places.

He’s trying not to focus on that, but he’s failing miserably. She’s been here for two years, likely alone, as Raymond and Kendra might be dead if she’s here. Even if they are alive, which considering they were marooned in a town where Savage is rampant and knows their location he isn’t so sure they are, they likely haven’t been here. After everything she’s been through, everything she’s worked for, she was pushed back into The League.

“Would you mind loosening these up a little bit before you leave?” He asks Mick, though he already knows the answer, but it’s worth a shot anyway.

Mick stalks by him without a word, as was to be expected.

“Just out of curiosity, what do you think your new masters are going to do with you once you’ve delivered the team up to them?” It’s a last resort, trying to get Mick to see that The Time Masters only view him as a means to an end, even if he’s sure Mick’s convinced he saw him the same way. “I don’t expect there’s a pension plan for old bounty hunters.”

Mick is still silent when he walks back onto the bridge, now with a very large gun slung over his shoulder.

Peachy.

“Once they get what they want from you, they’re gonna toss you aside.”

“Like you tossed me aside?”

“You and I both made choices that led us to this moment. What matters Mick, is your next move. I’m willing to be that some little piece of the old you is in that armor somewhere.” Truthfully he isn’t sure if he would win that bet, especially when Mick just barely offers his helmet a glance before the corners of his lips turn up in a smug smile.

“No,” he rumbles wickedly, “You’re wrong.”

With that said he engages his helmet and leaves the bridge yet again, and this time he doesn’t return.

Again, peachy.

Leonard sighs and bows his head; he really has made a mess of things. He listens carefully as Mick’s heavy footfalls get farther and farther away, until he hears the ramp of the time ship open and close, and only then does he get to his feet.

His posture is still hunched by the futuristic handcuffs, apparently one day they will invent a pair of cuffs that he can’t get out of. Maybe if he had enough time, but that’s a thought for later. Sliding his wrists along the rail he walks down the hallway as far as he can get before a piece of wall blocks him, which is no farther than the first corner, and then he has to reevaluate.

Peering around the corner he can see where Mick has hung up his cold gun on a weapons wrack, and for not the first time today a very bad plan crosses his mind.

Unfortunately, it’s the only one he’s got.

He gets as close as he can to the corner and raises his leg around it, kicking at his gun and trying to keep it close as possible while it falls. Once he’s managed to get his gun on the ground he slides his wrists down until he’s lying on the floor. Kicking at the gun to turn it around he balances it against the heel of his right foot, grateful to be wearing boots because there wouldn’t be a chance of this working if he were balancing the gun against his curved metal strip of a foot. Once he gets the toe of his left foot in position on the trigger he allows himself one brief second of hesitation and a deep breath, this isn’t going to be pretty.

He fires the gun at his hand, closing his eyes and gritting his teeth as the cold stings his skin until it’s numb, and only when he can hear the ice crunching on top of itself does Leonard stop firing. He lets out the breath as a gasp as he opens his eyes, tears already built up in their corners. His head falls back on the floor for a second but he forces himself back up and to his knees, much as that hurt, he isn’t through the worst of it yet.

He just glares at his frozen fist for a second; he’s at the point of no return. His mind races back to the sub, to Anatoly looming over him with that stupid crowbar, apologizing for everything that he was about to do along with everything that had already been done. As terrified as he’d been in that moment, at least he’d had the luxury of being able to pass out afterwards. He can’t do that this time. He has to pick himself up and get off this ship. He has to stop Mick, he has to save the team; he has to get to Sara.

This time, he can do that.

He takes another deep breath and again squeezes his eyes shut; at least this will likely be quicker than the crowbar.

He slams his fist down the rail until it shatters against the floor, and he screams out in agony when the pain explodes through him. It’s a white-hot pain that feels like it’s swallowing him whole, blurring his vision and launching the tears down his cheeks against his command. He feels sick as the blur clears, but he won’t give in to it. So with one deep, shuttering breath, he forces himself up to his feet, staggering against the white spots still in his vision. He can’t bring himself to tear the hand that he still has away from the one that is now gone, like holding the bloody stub is actually going to do him any good. He rolls his back and shoulders, occasionally even his head, against the walls to guide him as he heads for the exit, never once giving into the urge to just collapse.

That won’t do anyone any good.

The tears are still streaming down his face as he stumbles off the ship and trips over his own foot, the one that was never designed to hold staggering weight. He crashes to his knees in a pile of sand, the sudden fall combined with the fiery pain resulting in his throwing up whatever he has in his stomach. Gasping for air through the tears and the taste of bile in his mouth he forces himself up again, he won’t let the pain drag him under into unconsciousness. He charges forward, stumbling towards the blurred sight of a building in the side of the mountain just ahead of him. The fact that he makes it in, even through his haze, he knows is every bit as good as it is bad. Good because, obviously, he hasn’t been killed. Bad because if he hasn’t been killed that means there aren’t any guards on duty, which can only mean something big is going on inside.

He follows the sounds of fighting through the halls, the familiar blast of a futuristic gun serving almost as a beacon, a sign that it isn’t typical league fighting he’s following. Its getting closer and he can hear swords clashing on metal, blasts of fire erupting louder and louder.

Then, it stops.

He picks up the pace; he needs to make it. He can’t be too late; he can’t let this go any further than it already has.

 

* * *

 

“You’re not a murder, or an assassin.” Kendra insists while Sara is trying to keep her sword steady in her hand. She doesn’t want to do this, she didn’t even from the start, but she has to. It’s her place, it’s where she belongs, it’s all she knows how to do. “You’re the White Canary.”

She can feel her eyes welling up with tears as memories of Laurel and Leonard ring in her ears. They believed in her, saw the good in her; they wanted her to be a hero in the light.

She brings the sword down, but there is barely any time to relax because suddenly they can hear explosions, a familiar type that pulls at the edges of Sara’s memory.

“I know that sound,” Kendra groans, and suddenly Sara remembers.

She helps Kendra to her feet and hands her back her sword.

“Thanks,” she says just as Chronos steps into the room and takes his first shot.

“No problem, thanks for not killing me.” Kendra returns as the fight begins.

Even with Chronos drastically outnumbered by super-powered time travelers and assassins alike he still manages to hold his own, taking out nearly all of Ra’s soldiers, but the team eventually manages to knock him down long enough for Firestorm to wind up a fiery punch with perfect aim at his head, all set to rid them of their armored pain in the ass for good.

“Don’t do it!”

Sara feels her blood freeze in her system.

_“Stein?” A voice that she hadn’t heard in so many years had asked as they all regained consciousness on that rooftop. “What are you doing here?”_

She hadn’t believed it then, and she couldn’t believe it now. She turns to her side, almost not wanting to look because if he isn’t there, if this is all a dream…

He is there.

He’s leaning heavily against the wall, his face pained and riddled with guilt as he begs them not to kill Chronos, and his right hand clutching the wrist of his… oh god.

“Sorry, don’t kill Chronos?” Rip’s incredulous demand barely gets through her thoughts, as she is still staring at Leonard.

He meets her gaze for a moment, an apology clear on his face.

“He’s not Chronos.” He barks at Rip before his eyes move to Chronos, or whomever that is sitting just in front of her. “Show them.”

Now she brings her eyes back to the armored bounty hunter, curiosity peaked. When he doesn’t move Jax lunges forward and removes his helmet, and Sara feels her breathe catch before it can ever leave her lungs.

Chronos… is Mick.

 

* * *

 

After knocking Mick out they drag him back to The Waverider and lock him in the brig, where Leonard finds that he is in for quite the questioning. Of course, once they’re all done reprimanding him, Hunter gets the insane idea in his head that they can help Mick. Leonard isn’t really sure if he believes it can be done, but for once he hopes that he’s wrong.

Sara, who stands silent through the majority of the meeting, even comments that, after everything she’s been through the past two years, she needs to see Mick come back to them for her own sake.

That almost hurts more than losing his hand.

Which, turns out, Gideon can regenerate for him.

“You mean to tell me I’ve been living for weeks on this tub with a prosthetic leg when Gideon could’ve fixed it?” He asks as he examines his new hand, and Rip looks down to his legs as though he expects to somehow see the metal that is hidden under his pants and boots.

“I actually didn’t realize you had a prosthetic.” He finally manages, cheeks flushing just a tint of red. “If you would like for Gideon to replace it I’m sure she-”

“Pass,” Len interrupts, now that he’s actually begun to consider what he’s just said and the repercussions of it. “Maybe later, but if we’re gonna take down Savage we’ll need all hands on deck, so it’s probably not the best time for me to relearn how to walk.”

Rip nods, “Of course.” He says excusing himself from the med bay, and Len only waits a few seconds before following the path.

He’s still examining his new hand as he walks down the halls of the ship, his mind running through a potential list of everything that he could say once he reaches his destination. Yet when he finds himself face to face the chrome plated door he still feels like he’s at a loss for words.

But, it’s been two years for her, and he doesn’t want to put this off another second.

He knocks on her door and when it opens after a second he finds her looking at him with an expression of hesitant surprise, like she isn’t sure what to do around him anymore.

Like back on the rooftop.

It pains him, the crushing realization that they might be back to square one.

“Your hand’s back,” she observes, arms crossed over her chest as she nods towards the appendage he is still cradling.

“That it is,” he agrees, “It would appear that Gideon is capable of restoring missing limbs.”

“Your leg, then?” She asks and he glances down at the limb before shaking his head and returning his gaze to hers. “Not yet, could take me awhile to figure out how to walk again. Maybe after the mission.” She nods, and it’s quiet, neither of them sure what their boundaries are anymore. “Can I come in?”

She nods, so he enters and closes the door behind him, rocking back and forth as the silence drags out even more.

“I know it’s been two years for you, and with what you’ve been through in those two years… I understand if you still need time. I just-”

“I don’t,” she interrupts him, her face more serious than he thinks he’s ever seen it. “I don’t need time.” She takes a few steps closer to him as she talks, stopping only when she is directly in front of him. “In 1958, before I got left behind, I wanted to tell you then.” His eyes widen a bit, surprised that she indeed had been feeling the same regret over their agreement as him. “I know it’s only been a few hours to you, and with Mick… if you still need time-”

“No,” he interrupts her desperately.

“Hm?” She asks, sounding genuinely surprised, so he shakes his head.

“Even with Mick, with the mission, with everything and anything else that this universe decides to throw our way just for the hell of it; I have lost you too many times, Sara. I don’t want to waste another second. If you’ll have me-”

Let the record show that he isn’t exactly sure how he was intending to finish that sentence, but it doesn’t matter. Her hands are framing his face as her lips crash against his and anything he possibly could say has already flown from his mind.

He settles his hands onto her hips, his tongue demanding access to her mouth and he moans when she grants it. He slips his thumbs underneath the fabric of her tank top, grazing at her hips until she pulls away from the kiss.

The heat in her eyes is mesmerizing, not to mention everything he has been dreaming of for the past six years. There’s a question in them, though, as to if they are really making the decision to go down this road. They are, he nods to as much, letting her know that he’s meant what he’s said; so long as she’s alright with it, he’s done waiting.

She pulls him back for another kiss, much shorter gentler this time, before she pulls away with a smile and leans her forehead against his.

“We should get to the bridge before Rip comes looking for us,” she says and he gives a little bit of a groan, to which she chuckles. “How do you want to play this?”

What she’s really asking, he knows, is if he wants the team knowing what they’ve just decided. He doesn’t, in all honesty. He wants this to be something that’s just theirs for at least a little while, but the idea of sneaking around brings his mind back to where they first met on The Amazo when something like this would have painted a dangerous target on both their backs. Things aren’t like that here, and he would rather not pretend that they are.

 

* * *

 

They turn a few heads when they walk onto the bridge hand in hand, but Sara couldn’t care less if she tried. This all still feels a little like it’s a dream, like she’s going to wake up back in her quarters in Nanda Parbat any minute and head off to the mountains to calm herself down.

A squeeze from Len’s hand reminds her that this is real, that she isn’t going to wake up in a cold sweat yet again. She smiles at him, and that’s about when Kendra and Ray walk in completely wrapped up in each other.

Even so, Kendra still raises an eyebrow at her and Leonard, and Sara knows she is going to have to do some actual explaining at some point.

But, for now, it’s time to get out of 1960.

“I thought you had no idea where he was?” Leonard asks, anger rising in his tone after Rip announces that they’re going to 2147 in order to take on Savage.

“You said Savage was lost to history,” Stein seconds.

“Not world changing history,” Rip admits. “Records of the period are scarce, but I’ve always known Vandal Savage could be located in 2147.”

“Why haven’t you told us this sooner?” Jax demands, although he doesn’t exactly sound surprised.

“Because that period of history is filled with more peril than I was willing to risk.” Rip quickly supplies, before he sighs. “But now we have no choice, we have to stop Vandal Savage in 2147, or die trying.”

There’s a somber tone suddenly in the atmosphere, because the mission has entered into now or never territory. If they don’t go to 2147 and take Savage out then it’s over, he’ll get power.

Then they will be left with only one other option.

“Well,” Kendra is the first to speak up, “I’ve died before.”

“So have I,” Sara seconds, feeling another squeeze from Leonard, and slowly everyone’s eyes move to Rip.

“Gideon,” he says, seeing that nobody is going to protest this suicide mission. “Plot a course for Kasnia Conglomerate.”

They all file into their seats, Sara splitting with Leonard to move to the one she claimed as her own long ago. She notices that he looks hurt for a moment, but he also understands. The seat beside him belongs to Mick, and it will be waiting for him whenever he is ready to reclaim it.


	11. The Hard Way

When they land Sara runs her hands over her head and through her hair, trying to stave off a headache. She had almost forgotten how unpleasant time travel could be on the body. Looking over at Leonard she sees some vague concern lining his features, so she gives a silent nod to let him know that she’s alright. The first thing Rip does is give them all orders to go to the fabrication room to get changed, whilst he heads down to the brig to attempt reasoning with Mick.

“Think that he’ll be able to do it?” She asks as she falls into step beside Leonard, not really surprised in the least when he scoffs.

“Undo lifetimes of Time Master brainwashing in one morning?” He asks with a shake of his head. “If Mick come’s around it isn’t going to be because of Hunter.”

Sara hums in agreement with that, “Ok,” she says, “So… are you going to talk to him?”

He sighs, heavily, like he is carefully searching for an answer that will be both true and satisfactory for this conversation.

“Probably, eventually.” He decides on, just as they reach the fabrication room. She nods in acceptance of the answer, then reaches out to take his hand before they join the rest of the team in the room.

“Just, whenever you do, I’m here if you need me.”

He smiles at her, running his thumb over her knuckles before bending his head to press a chaste kiss to her lips.

“I know,” he says with a small smile as he pulls away, a smile that she returns, and then they head together into the fabrication room.

 

* * *

 

The future, in Leonard’s opinion anyway, is unimpressive. It’s exactly what you would expect from a science fiction novel about a utopia of a future that’s about to go down the drain. Plus there are the sentient upgrades of Raymond’s suit flying around and acting as some sort of law enforcement. Whether the team’s resident inventor is happy or concerned about this Leonard honestly couldn’t say, but the other man does go to investigate the matter and takes both halves of Firestorm with him. This leaves Leonard and Sara with Rip, who sneaks is way into a government shareholders meeting but turns out it has to be a one man gig, thus he leaves the two of them in the building’s lobby.

“Well, not exactly what I pictured for a first date.” Len drawls as he and Sara find a bench. She smirks at his remark, earning a similar expression from him in response.

“You’ve pictured a first date?” She asks, more serious than judgmental, and he shrugs.

“What can I say?” He asks, “After the hell ship I had a lot of time on my hands laying in that hospital. I thought you were dead so I started imagining all the things that could’ve been if…” He trails off, suddenly not wanting to finish that, not wanting to make her feel guilty.

“If I hadn’t gone back.” She finishes it for him, and it sounds even more selfish coming from her mouth.

“I know why you did,” he says quickly, “I’m glad you did, if you hadn’t Star City might have been what we saw in 2046 by the time you got back.”

It isn’t the best reassurance, but she smiles anyway and leans herself into his side, taking his hand in hers when he hesitantly drapes an arm along her shoulders.

“Thanks,” she says, smirking a little to herself as she laces their fingers together. “You know, for what it’s worth, I thought about it to.” She reveals looking up at him with a little smile that only grows when he raises an eyebrow at her.

“Really?” He asks, only a little doubtful, and only because she’s told him about Nyssa.

“Mmhm,” she hums, nodding. “Some nights when I was trying to sleep I would think about what might have happened if Ollie had gotten on that sub with us.”

She lets her words hang there for a moment, her eyes distant, and he knows why. She’s thinking the same thing he is, her mind replaying that horrible moment when they split up on the sub. It couldn’t have gone differently, they both know it. Oliver didn’t deserve to die at Slade’s hand. But, after it happened, it was impossible to not think about what might have happened if he hadn’t remained on board The Amazo.

“What did you come up with?” He asks and Sara looks up at him, before her gaze wanders again and she shrugs.

“At first I thought about the sub, wishing I could’ve been there with you. Then, some nights when I couldn’t sleep, I would think about what it might have been like if we were just rescued from the island like normal castaways.”

He can’t help but to laugh at that, as if there is such a thing as a “normal castaway”.

“When have we ever been normal?” He asks, looking at the future playing out around them, and Sara chuckles.

“Touché,” she grants him and, before anything else can be said, Rip finally comes walking out of the meeting.

“You don’t look too happy,” Len observes as he and Sara stand and separate themselves from each other.

“Perceptive as always Mr. Snart.” Rip comments dryly.

“Did you find him?” Sara asks, folding her arms across her chest, and Rip nods to her question.

“Come on,” he says, “I’ll explain everything back on the ship.”

* * *

 

He’s found Savage alright, along with Per Degaton, the future ruler of The Kasnia Conglomerate. He’s just a kid right now, barely eleven or twelve if Sara is guessing based on his picture, but it won’t belong before he inherits the throne. Savage is his tutor, so it only makes sense that it will be at his urging that a barely grown Per Degaton unleashes a man maid virus to demolish over half the world’s population, leaving the planet prime for Savage’s take over.

They can stop Savage’s rise to power right here and now, save Rip’s family and complete their mission; but at a price.

“To be clear,” Stein splutters as they all file onto the bridge to stand over the holo-table and discuss the plan Rip has just purposed. “We’re talking about murdering a child!”

“Who hasn’t done anything to anyone.” Jax adds on.

Sara can’t believe that they’re even having this conversation, and just when she thought she had seen the worst of Rip.

“Not yet,” Leonard buts in, “So why don’t we pick him off now, while the pickings easy?”

She honestly can’t tell if he’s serious or not. She thinks that it’s a little bit of both serious and sarcastic; serious enough to do it but sarcastic enough to realize that it’s completely insane.

They argue about it as a team for another few agonizing minutes, Rip compares the kid’s adult self to Hitler while Jax makes the point that it is not Per Degaton’s fault he is being taut by an immortal psychopath. Then Stein brings up the point that murdering an innocent kid, even if it is in the name of saving the world, would hardly be any better than what Savage is going to do to Rip’s own son; part of the reason they’re even on this mission in the first place.

“I’m with Professor Stein,” Ray solemnly says after a beat of silence.

“Ok fine,” Leonard drawls, “If you don’t have the guts to kill this kid-”

Sara cuts him off, slamming her hand down on the edge of the table and startling everyone’s eyes to her. She doesn’t pay them any mind, though; she only looks at Leonard. He stares her down, trying silently to convince her that he believes what he’s saying, and to her terror it actually works a little. She see’s sorrow in his gaze, but not regret, not completely anyway. She doesn’t want to have this conversation here in front of the team, and she’s fairly sure that neither does he, so she storms out without a word.

It doesn’t take long before she hears his footsteps coming after her.

She ignores him at first and continues on her way, her anger still boiling over the conversation they just left, the conversation he was encouraging.

“Are you going to talk to me or should I just go back?” His drawling voice eventually inquires, bringing her marching footsteps to a halt.

She sighs as she turns around, trying to keep her anger from exploding out of her.

“I understand what’s at stake here,” she tells him evenly, “I do. But killing a kid?”

“You don’t have to kill him,” he promises her, knowing that she’s thinking about how she didn’t leave the League of Assassins so she could murder a preteen boy.

“Like that makes it any better?” She scoffs and when she stays rooted where she is he takes it upon himself to approach her.

She avoids his eyes for a moment, arms crossed and head turned pointedly to the side. She hears him sigh, and then feels it when he reaches out and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. He still remains silent for a moment, patiently waiting for her to look at him, and finally she obliges.

“It sucks,” he admits, “But this kid is going to grow up to be dangerous. We’ve already made the mistake of letting one homicidal maniac live and look what happened.”  
She furrows her brow at that, her lips pursed as she realizes why he’s been campaigning for the murder of this kid.

“Showing Mick mercy wasn’t a mistake.” He looks like he wants to argue, but she isn’t going to give him that chance. “If you had killed him you would’ve had to live with it for the rest of your life. But he’s still here, we can still save him and Per Degaton.”

He looks guilty, as well as sorry, so Sara uncrosses her arms with a small smile and takes his hands.

“It’ll be ok,” she promises, running her thumb lightly over his knuckles before leaning up to press a soft, comforting kiss to his lips.

God, she loves being able to do that.

 

* * *

 

They decide to kidnap Per Degaton instead, which Leonard supposes is a fair compromise from killing him. He hopes that Sara is right about being able to save him, for all their sakes.

But, so far, it isn’t looking good.

“What do you mean it did nothing?” Stein demands, incredulous as usual.

“I mean that kidnapping Per Degaton had a nominal effect upon the timeline.” Rip babbles out, clearly frustrated.

Leonard has an idea there about dumping the kid in some random place in time where he won’t be able to cause any trouble, but the thought brings back the sickening memory of dragging Mick out to the woods before abandoning him there for the Time Masters to find a torture, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“I don’t get it,” Jax says, “Supposedly this kid’s like a baby Hitler, shouldn’t taking him out of the timeline stop him from getting the world ready for Savage?”

“As I have said before, Mr. Jackson, time wants to happen,” Rip interjects, “Such a world changing even like Savage’s rise to power can’t be stopped merely by kidnapping his young pawn.”

“And you think killing him will work out any different?” Sara asks, arms folded across her chest with her chin raised in a to challenge Rip.

The Captain sighs, leaning his weight heavily on the edges of the table.

“Due to the fact that killing Per Degaton would result in a definite, permanent, removal of his effect on the timeline… possibly.”

“Possibly?” Stein questions, “We are contemplating the murder of an innocent child, for possibly?”

Let it be known that it is very rare Len finds himself agreeing with Professor Know-it-all, but this is one of those rare instances.

“Let us not forget that this child will one day be responsible for billions of deaths, including those of my family.” Rip argues, but Stein isn’t having it.

“Say that we do stop Savage,” The older man proposes, “Say that killing Per Degaton while he is a child does in fact stop his rise to power, and you save the lives of your family. Will you be able to look your own son in the eye knowing what you did so he could live?”

All eyes turn from Stein to Rip as though the crew is watching a tennis match and the ball has just landed in his court, and there should be a silence while Rip thinks, but there isn’t one.

Instead, their Captain answers immediately.

“When the alternative is that I shall never see him again-”

“I got a better idea,” Jax interrupts before this can go any further. “Instead of arguing over whether we should kill him or lock him up, why don’t we just talk to him?”

Rip actually laughs at that suggestion, “Savage has spent years corrupting his mind.”

“It’s not too late for Per Degaton to change,” Sara speaks up in defense.

“Says who?” Rip asks of her and Len finds himself biting at the inside of his cheek in order to keep his mouth shut, as well as clenching his fist tight.

Sara levels a glare with the other man, clearly also unable to believe that he has really just asked that question so carelessly.

“Says someone with two tours with the League of Assassins and a case of bloodlust under her belt.”

The ball is back in Rip’s court, and this time it looks like he’s coming up with nothing. Sara knows how to quit when she’s ahead, so she shrugs and walks off the bridge, and Len watches her go with a proud smirk.

 

* * *

 

After leaving Rip and the others Sara goes off to a place she’s been more or less avoiding, if only because she was hoping Len would come down first. But he hasn’t, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to, so it’s going to have to be her.

When she arrives Mick is sitting on the brig’s small bench with his head bowed, the indifferent frown that seems to now be a permanent fixture on him perfectly in place.

“Ah finally,” he says calmly when she walks in, “Someone who’s willing to do a man’s job.”

Sara hadn’t known what she was expecting when she came in here, but that certainly hadn’t been it.

“Not why I’m here,” she says, pacing to the other end of the room.

Mick huffs at her, “Why not?” He asks, “I know Snart likes to think he’s protecting ya, but you can make your own choices.”

She nods, picking up the true meaning under those words. He’s trying to get a rise out of her like a schoolyard bully, trying to get her to focus on an insinuation that Leonard is telling her what to do. But, when she ignores that message, she hears the underlying one, the very same thing he said to her before he burned her arm.

_“I like you Sara.”_

He doesn’t hate her, he isn’t mad at her; he just thinks Leonard chose her over him.

Hence, why she is here.

“I can,” she agrees with him, leaning herself casually against the back wall. “And I am choosing not to kill you. You’re welcome, by the way.”

He snorts at that, “Welcome,” he muses, “If I was welcome I wouldn’t be locked up in here.”

“You did sell us out to a gang of time pirates and try to kill us all,” she reminds him and he growls at her.

“What choice did I have?” He demands, “I didn’t have any interest in being a hero, Snart didn’t either, until you got to him.”

“That’s bull and you know it.” She tells him, her tone leaving no room for argument. She lets the silence drag out for a beat as she slides down to the floor, her gaze fixed on the other side of the room rather than on him.

“I don’t know what Leonard told you about that boat, but I spent a year with him as the closest thing I had to a friend. He would tell me about you and Lisa, about Lewis. He told me how it was your fault he was on that ship to begin with, that you were on lookout for a job and you didn’t see that it wasn’t clear. You guys got caught and the next thing he knew he was on a freighter about twenty miles away from shore.”

She pauses for a moment, gauging Mick for a reaction, and when the one she sees is one of contemplation she decides to keep going.

“He never regretted getting captured. I mean, he was pissed that it happened, but he’d rather it have been him than you. He stopped Ivo from letting his men…” She shudders as she thinks about it, what almost happened to her all those years ago.

“They were going to do what they wanted with me. But Len stopped them, and he taught me how to survive.”

“Well whoop-dee-doo for you,” Mick rumbles lowly, and she smirks.

“My point is Leonard has always been a hero. Whether it’s been saving Lisa, or you, or me, he’s always been looking out for people that he loves. He’s your friend, a loyal one. You should know that.”

With that she gets up and leaves him to think about what she’s said, hoping that it will resonate.

 

* * *

 

This mission should’ve been easy.

Take baby Hitler out of the equation and hopefully that will remove Savage from the picture as well. But instead it’s turned into a mess, the team opting to simply kidnap Per Degaton instead of killing him, which resulted in both the kid and The Captain being MIA for a few hours. On top of that Savage managed to get a knife to Sara’s throat and then, after making sure she was ok, Leonard decided to humor her urgings and went down to clear the air with Mick.

This day has been anything but easy.

Well, actually, for as bad as it’s been at least Mick didn’t kill him. Though according to him it doesn’t matter much anyway; the Time Masters are out for blood now.

Sara opens her door after the first time he knocks, looking him up and down so she can take in the extent of the damage Mick has left on his face. At least, he’s pretty sure that’s what she’s doing, his head is still pounding and his vision unsteady after his best friend beat him within an inch of his life.

“You look like hell,” she observes and he wants to scoff a laugh but it hurts too much, so he settles for a groan instead.

She takes his hand gently, leading him into her room and over to sit on her bed. This time he does manage a chuckle upon seeing the med kit ready to go on top of her covers. He hadn’t told her he and Mick were going to settle their differences physically, but she knows him. At the very least she probably asked Gideon what was happening in the brig to make sure that he actually went.

“Thanks,” He murmurs as she presses an ice pack to his jaw, and then carefully brings one of his hands to hold it there before moving on to a pile of tissues.

“For pushing you to work things out with Mick or for patching you up afterwards?” She asks while she places one hand on the back of his head and gently tugs him forward while her other hand dabs at the blood outlining his nostrils.

He chuckles despite the pain it causes, and waits until she let’s him pull back to answer her.

“Both,” she smirks at that, putting down the bloodied tissues and then placing her hand tenderly on his less bruised cheek, her thumb brushing lighting at the dried blood in the corner of his mouth.

He wishes they could stay in this moment forever, despite the pain he feels in every square inch of his body. Just the two of them, here in her room and safe from the outside world, even if they aren’t really safe and there is the impending doom of a temporal death squad looming over their shoulders; he would love to go on pretending.

But, when has the universe ever given a damn about what he wants?


	12. Wild, Wild West

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the delay with this chapter, I took a bit of a hiatus from this story to participate in Captain Canary Week. Hopefully this chapter is worth the wait!

They land in the old west in order to hide out from the Time Masters, which turns out to be a hellish time jump because it is so far back. After the effects of the jump wear off, and after they spend all of two minutes convincing Rip, they decide to go out for a look around. That look around quickly turns into a saloon brawl and, for Sara, a horseback-riding trip through the valley with Kendra. It’s her idea, more or less, as she sees Kendra heading out and she’s been meaning to talk to her about 1958 and why she left. She’s sure she owes Ray an explanation as well but she isn’t really in the mood to answer a bombarding of questions, no matter how well intentioned, and Kendra is so much more tactful. She can tell Ray anything he wants to know later.

So she tags along on Kendra’s little excursion to track down a woman she had seen in the saloon after she had more flashes of memories from her past lives. They ride in silence for a while, an unspoken agreement that they aren’t going to talk until they are well out of the possible earshot of anyone on the team, and then even long after that.

“You know there’s something weird going on with your face,” Kendra observes once the silence has apparently dragged out for long enough, and so Sara glances over at her.

“What?” She asks and, of course, the other woman gets a teasing little smirk on her own face.

“You’re smiling.”

Sara laughs, the smile that is, apparently, already on her face growing wider.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” Kendra continues to tease, her own smile now bright and amused.

“Well don’t tell anyone my secret,” Sara playfully warns and they ride in silence for another few minutes.

“I guess you do have reason to smile now,” Kendra eventually remarks, a touch more seriously than before, but her tone still light. “We’re not stuck in the 50’s anymore, and you and Snart seem to have taken your flirting up a notch?”

It isn’t really a question, even if it is phrased as one.

Still, Sara doesn’t answer it, not right away at least.

“Leonard and I… We’ve always been like two ships passing in the night.” She says, her barrowed hoarse has slowed it’s pace, nearly stopped, but she doesn’t mind. Kendra’s is doing the same, and it’s ok that they’re taking their time, they’re probably going to need it.

Case and point, Kendra’s raised eyebrow. “Always?” She asks, “As in you knew each other before Rip recruited us.”

Sara nods, encouraging her hoarse to pick up the pace just a little bit, and more out of the need to have a task to focus on than a desire to actually move along.

“Before I was an assassin, way before, I got on a boat. Boat went down and I thought I was done for but then there was this freighter, it was a prison ship and the guards pulled me out of the water, not that they were any better than the prisoners.”

Kendra sits with that for a moment, the gears almost visible as they turn in her head, her brow scrunched like she can’t entirely comprehend the idea of a prison with guards every bit as horrific as it’s inmates.

“Snart was on the ship?” She asks and Sara smirks at the confused expression on her friend’s face, if only because of how much it says that Kendra is having trouble picturing the team’s resident crook locked up with the worst of the worst.

“It’s a long story,” she says, not really in the mood to explain how it was that Leonard ever found himself in that floating hell. “But he had bargained his way to being a navigator. The Captain was the one who stopped the others from hurting me, the first time, but it was Leonard who kept me alive. Without him I wouldn’t be here.”

Kendra nods, and at this point they’ve come to a stop, so she urges her hoarse forward again and Sara follows her lead.

“Wow,” she says, “And here I thought you guys just really hit it off.”

“Not everything is always as it appears,” Sara replies with a laugh, to which her friend nods again.

“I know what you mean,” she says, her voice distant and almost wistful. “I thought Carter was just a confused stalker but… turns out he was more.”

There are implications there, Sara realizes, about Ray. But they’re murky, like Kendra couldn’t talk about them right now even if she wanted to, because even she doesn’t yet know what they are. So Sara leaves it alone, choosing instead to focus on continuing forward and thinking of something else to say.

Then, she chuckles.

“Don’t feel bad,” she advises as she steers her horse away from a large rock, “I’m pretty sure Len hated me when we first met.”

Kendra laughs at that, and it’s evident in her smile that she’s grateful for the distraction.

“Somehow I can’t picture that,” the other woman says.

“It’s true,” Sara insists, “Not that I blame him. He isn’t exactly a people person but, unfortunately for him, he was the only person on that ship other than the Captain I felt anything close to safe around, so I would follow him like some sad little puppy.”

She can’t help but to laugh at her own metaphor, remembering the early days on The Amazo when she would trail after Leonard in the corridors after they’d finished with their training until reaching the closet he called his quarters, at which point he would always slam the door in her face.

She turns to say something else to Kendra, but the other woman has a far off look in her unfocused eyes and Sara feels her smile fall away.

“What is it?” She asks when Kendra blinks herself back to reality and looks over at her.

“This way,” she says, pointing down a beaten path not too far ahead of them.

Sara nods, suddenly remembering the reason they’re out here in the first place, and so without another word they both urge their horses onward to a gallop.

 

* * *

 

It turns out the woman Kendra saw in the saloon is actually one of her past lives, and she basically told her to break up with Ray because she’ll never get over Carter. Personally Sara has mixed feelings on the advice. On one hand she agrees that Kendra shouldn’t expect to get over Carter, but on the other hand Carter is dead and she shouldn’t let his memory prevent her from being happy. She tells Kendra this much, and the other woman seems to share the sentiment to an extent, but isn’t entirely convinced.

Sara doesn’t have time to worry about convincing her, though, because while they’ve been out Jax apparently managed to get himself captured and so they have to go get him back.

Getting him back, however, turns out to be the easy part. An old west showdown is over in ten seconds flat, plain and simple. The real trouble turns up after the showdown, in the form of three temporal hunters hell bent on bringing them to the Time Masters on a silver platter.

The fight is messy, to say the least, but in the end the only ones who die are their enemies. For once, it actually looks as though they’ve won.

Sara should know by now that looks can be deceiving.

According to Mick he managed to get one of The Hunters to talk just before he killed him, and turns out The Time Masters are done playing games. The Hunters were just a safety precaution, a distraction so the team wouldn’t notice the real danger. An assassin who goes by the name The Pilgrim is hunting them, only it isn’t them who’s being hunted.

It’s their younger selves.

They leave the old west in order to dock in the temporal zone while Gideon runs calculations on where The Pilgrim might be headed in each of their timelines. The atmosphere around the ship feels heavier than normal, weighed down by the tension of knowing that any one of them could vanish at any moment.

“Gideon will find her,” Leonard says as the two of them are trailing silently through the barracks.

Sara could point out how he is far from being the type of person to just “have faith” and so his words are hardly a comfort. But she doesn’t have the heart to tell him that, and so as they reach her door she leans her back against it and looks up at him.

For a moment she just looks at him, aware that the fear is showing in her eyes and perfectly alright with it. She doesn’t need to wear a mask around him, she never has.

“In time?”

She can almost see his breath catch in his throat at her question, and it’s all the answer she needs. There is no way of knowing how much time they have left together. It could be anywhere from seconds to years, no way to say for sure.

But, then again, hasn’t that always been the case with them?  
There isn’t much distance between them to close, so it’s easy for Sara to frame Leonard’s face and bring his lips to hers in a loving kiss. His hands settle at her sides, pressing her against the door while she deepens the kiss. They’ve lost each other so many times, and if it has to happen again she doesn’t intend to let him go with regrets.

He appears to have the same idea, as his hands have wormed their way to her ass and she moans into his mouth when he lifts her off the ground. She doesn’t have to think as she wraps her legs around his waist, the action natural despite them never having gone this far. Still, he shifts her weight expertly in his hands until he can get his palm against the scanner and suddenly the door behind her is gone, it’s lack of presence sending the two of them stumbling into the room.

That’s when she finally breaks the kiss, pulling her head back just enough to look at him while she catches her breath. There is a burning desire ignited in his eyes, but a question too, and she nods, before going back in for another kiss.

This kiss is far more heated than the last, their tongues engaged in a wrestling match until she finds herself landing with a bounce on her mattress and Leonard looming over her.

He’s catching his breath, and so is she. She can tell he’s considering asking outright for her permission here, always the gentleman, so she reaches up with one hand and skims it along his cheek until it’s settled firm.

“I want this,” she promises, her voice serious as she props herself up on her other elbow as so to reach him better. “If you do.”

He nods, eyes still dark and needy. “More than anything,” he swears, a little breathless from their kiss, but it’s not like she isn’t.

She surges up the rest of the way at his words, meeting his lips in another chaste kiss that soon turns heated.

She pushes herself into a fully seated position, more or less, enough that she isn’t leaning on her elbow anyway. The position is still awkward, considering she is still mostly underneath him, and grinding her hips against him very nearly makes them both lose their balance.

“Sara,” Leonard groans against her mouth, which has her giggling like teenager, something she hasn’t done in a very long time.

But, the smile fades quickly.

“Stop.”

She halts immediately at his request, pulling back and almost out from under him, trying to keep the hurt from showing in her eyes. She can see apology in his gaze, but the desire is still there, he still wants this.

“I… Sara, what you’re about to see…” Her eyes grow wide as he tries to find the words, as she understands that he didn’t stop her because he changed his mind.

She pushes away from him fully, and he looks hurt for a fraction of a second before she pulls her shirt over her head and tosses it to the ground.

She’s quiet while she sits before him, her back straight so that he can get a good look at the three triangular blobs that adorn her abdomen, stacked one on top of the other in perfect symmetry. She gives him a few seconds to take in the sight before she reaches forward, taking his hand gingerly in her own and tugging it forward until his fingertips caress along the surface of her scars. His touch is light as a feather, hesitant despite her silent insistence that it’s alright. Eventually he scoots closer, letting the full weight of his palm rest against her skin. They sit like that for a moment, and then she reaches forward again and takes his other hand, this time pulling it behind her to feel the jagged lines on her back.

She sees his eyes widen just a hair when he touches the rough surface of her shoulder blade, fingers moving gentle and slow as he begins to feel his way around her. He doesn’t let his hand stray further than an inch from where she’s placed it at first, but as the minutes tick by his strokes become more assured, longer, and soon he’s running his hand all up and along the length of her side.

Sara could lose herself to this sensation alone, the soothing feel of his hand rubbing gentle lines on her skin, careful over the old injuries but not out of fear of rejection. She has to fight the urge to close her eyes with the bliss it instills in her, now isn’t about her.

“I love you,” she assures him, eyes staring right into his. “No matter your past.”

The switch from this gentle, careful love to once again devouring each other is so quick Sara actually squeals in surprise, and she lets herself fall back with Leonard’s weight suddenly crashed on top of her. This time her hands go right for the hem of his sweater, but she breaks their kiss long enough to look at him for permission. He nods and they half-sit up once again, just enough for her to remove the top half of his clothing. His sweater goes first, followed by his under shirt, and the breath catches in Sara’s throat when she finally sees his bare chest before her.

It’s decorated with all types of scars, from long red lines, to neat little indents, and the speckled bumps of what she’d guess are cigarette burns. Her gasp, mind you, is out of appreciation for his toned muscles, and to prove it she winds her arms around him and pulls herself closer, kissing him lightly when they meet.

“Ok?” He asks, and damn, she doesn’t think she’s ever seen him nervous before but it is adorable.

“Perfect,” she hums, kissing him again, and again, and again until they fall back once more with him hitting the mattress this time.

Straddling him now Sara wastes no time with getting back into the rhythm of things, grinding her hips down against his to the point where he moans into her mouth. She gives a dirty, not to mention very pleased, smirk to that and bites a bit on his lip.

“Someone’s impatient,” he chides as she releases his lip.

“Been waiting close to ten years,” she reminds him, “Patience only last so long.”

He makes a non-committal grunt of a noise at that before kissing her again, this time lighter.

“Well then,” he drawls in a low, husky toned whisper that gives her Goose bumps. “I’d hate to keep you waiting.”

She smirks at the words, a huffy laugh escaping her that quickly turns into a shriek of surprise when he, without warning, seizes her foot and sends her flying onto her back.

“Seriously Crook?” She huffs as he begins undoing the buckles of her boots.

“Sorry, but I would just hate to get scuff marks on your sheets.” He excuses and she rolls her eyes, but so long as she’s being held captive at this angle she turns onto her side and removes his right boot. Then she rolls for his left, he’s already finished with both hers of course, and she’s about halfway through untying the laces-

_Oh._

She’d nearly forgotten, and suddenly untying this boot feels like an intrusion. She glances up at him, a part of her knowing that he had hoped she would remove his shoes whilst he did hers, and the other part needing some sort of confirmation that she isn’t overstepping a huge boundary line.

He nods his approval, so she rolls herself to her knees and carefully finishes her work with his boot.

His left “foot” is hardly a foot at all, but a piece of curved metal sturdy enough to hold his weight. Logically she knows he can’t feel her hands here, but regardless she still moves them in slow, delicate brushes as she searches for the pin located where his ankle should be.

Touching the metal of his leg, feeling everything the gangrene took from him, it’s enough to transport her mind back to The Amazo. For a brief few seconds she remembers Ivo, Butcher, Anatoly, and everyone else who was on that floating hell. It’s a testament to the control she’s gained over her bloodlust that she isn’t seething with rage right now, but is instead moving carefully as she rolls the leg on his jeans up over his knee.

She has only ever seen his full prosthetic once, while they were dying in the engine room and he removed it to slow the progression of frostbite. But this is different. She didn’t really look at it that day, considering she’d had a few more pressing matters on her mind. But now he’s showing her the full extent of what he lost on that ship.

The metallic half of his leg, admittedly, isn’t much to look at. Above the “foot” are a few metal rods screwed tightly together and supportive of a cup-like shell made out of a strong plastic, probably fiberglass, with some metal along the ridges to act as reinforcement.

She clicks the pin down by where the “foot” attaches to the rod of the “shin”, and the whole thing slides off at once. After that it’s just a matter of removing two specially designed socks, but she still takes her time, her fingers skimming down his thigh and feeling each new inch of skin as it’s revealed. When she comes to the end and her fingers skim the scar tissue of the stub below his knee she fights to contain a gasp, because he’s told her that Anatoly’s amputation had involved him hacking what was left of his bone and muscle away with a crowbar, but the scars there are so misshapen… if she ever sees Anatoly again she is going to have a few words for him.

But, for now, her eyes go back to Leonard’s. He’s been watching her carefully this whole time, his eyes hungry. She crawls across his lap to meet his lips in another loving kiss, silently promising him that she’s meant what she said earlier; she loves him, no matter his past.

She can feel it in the way that he’s holding her, he feels the same, and it brings a smile to her face.

She moans happily as his hands work their way up her sides and to the clasps of her bra, his long fingers unhooking it without him needing to break their kiss. She lets the bra slide forward off her arms and almost immediately she is attacked with a flurry of kisses to her chest. She laughs at first, though that laugh quickly turns into a deep moan when Leonard takes one of her breasts in his mouth, tongue rolling over her hardened nipple and she arches her back in pleasure, her nails scraping through his short hair. She can feel him smirking; he knows what he’s doing to her, the asshole. She decides to have a little fun of her own and rolls her hips against his, something that nearly backfires when his reaction presents itself in his biting down lightly on her breast and it feels so good.

“Pants Leonard,” she actually begs him, “Now.”

He chuckles into her chest, and instead of complying moves his attention to her other breast. She knows she isn’t helping her plea any by keeping a firm hold on the back of his head, it’s only encouraging him to continue denying her what she’s been waiting so long for.

But, he’s been waiting to.

Once he brings the attention of his mouth back to hers her hands fly from his scalp to his pants, fiddling with his belt as he sneakers but soon does the same to hers.

Where their shirts and his shoes were a bit more of a process to take off, weighted by the emotional history of what they keep covered beneath those items, their pants go quickly. Sara moves faster in removing hers, and Leonard chuckles again when looks back to her after removing the last of his clothing and he sees that she has fished a condom out of… somewhere.

“You always this prepared Assassin?” He questions, reaching over and taking the shiny little packet from her.

“I try to be,” she purrs while watching him, liking her lips in hunger as she watches him take his sweet time with rolling the condom up his length. She’s certain he could do it faster and is only torturing her yet again, but he can’t drag this out forever, and once he finally has the condom on she all but jumps him, sending them both toppling over.

He smirks as they get their bearings, her settling on top of him in a straddle.

“You know someday, you’re going to let me take my time with you.” He tells her and she hums with false consideration.

“Someday,” she agrees, rolling her hips back against his and this time he emits a small grunt of want, the absence of pants making it so he feels her slick moisture against him.

She smirks at his reaction, confirmation that despite a few remarks about her patience, or lack thereof, he isn’t really bothered by it.

“But not today.”


	13. The Innocent Ones

Their bliss doesn’t last for long, not that Sara had expected it would, but the universe is still a little kinder to them than normal today. After their… activities, are finished they still have a few minutes to lie together in bed catching their breath before Gideon informs them that they’ll be making a time jump, as she’s narrowed down one of The Pilgrim’s more likely destinations.

It’s in Leonard’s past.

They go back to the fall of 1986, to the very first time he was transported to Juvie. He and Mick take the places of the truck drivers, while Sara and Jax fill in as the two guards in the back. Sara is willing to admit that it’s more than a little strange sitting across from a fourteen-year-old version of Leonard. He clearly hasn’t hit his growth spurt yet, standing just a little over five feet tall. His face, though not quite sunken, is every bit skinny and boney as the rest of him. His hair is so dark, black and much longer than the close cut it is now, though by no means is it actually long. The length reveals curls she never knew he had, and a part of her thinks how adorable they look on his younger self.

The other part, well, that part of her is focused on the final thing about this younger Leonard that differs so much from the current version.

He looks so scared.

In all the time she’s spent with Leonard she’s only ever seen him scared like this once, back when she left him on the sub, and so seeing that terrified expression on his face again isn’t boding well with her.

She wants to offer him some words of encouragement, even if he doesn’t yet know who she is. But the truck swerves to the side before she can come up with anything.

She has to plant her feet hard to keep from falling over, but little Leonard isn’t so lucky and he goes toppling forward, knocking his head against her legs.

“We’ve got company!” Leonard, her Leonard, snarls over the comms and Sara exchanges a look with Jax, who nods at her and so she hastily pulls their teenage version of Leonard to his feet.

“Stay here,” she orders him, a pang of hurt ringing out in her chest as she sees the terror in his eyes. “It’s gonna be ok, I promise.”

She doubts the words mean much to him, at fourteen he’s already spent enough time with Lewis that they’re likely to be perceived as hollow. But she says them anyway, and then she goes out and joins the fray.

 

* * *

 

After winning the fight against The Pilgrim, likely the first of many, they bring Leonard’s younger self back to the ship and lock him in a cargo hold. They tell him that they work for a secret agency called A.R.G.U.S. and his involvement with the attacker is nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. Personally Leonard doubts his younger self buys the cover, even if he says he does. More likely than not he just doesn’t care. He’s too young to have ever tasted any real control over his life, too broken to know he should be demanding answers. All he knows is he isn’t in Juvie, and he isn’t at home, so it’s enough for him.

Reconvening on the bridge leads to Rip revealing that due to the delicacy of time The Pilgrim only has one chance to kill each of their younger selves, so she can’t go after any of them twice. That’s a good thing, even if it does mean they only have one chance per Legend to beat her to her target.

The meeting doesn’t get any further than that before Gideon chimes in with a report, she’s found The Pilgrim’s next destination.

Star City, 2005.

She’s going after Sara.

Rescuing her goes about as well as it did with his younger self, but they succeed and get mini Sara safely back to the ship, leaving her in the cargo hold with Leonard’s own younger self.

It’s odd, seeing this younger Sara, untouched by the darkness of the world. It makes Leonard realize he had almost forgotten just how innocent she was when she was first pulled onto The Amazo. She looks so scared, but as they leave the cargo hold she calls after them for answers, pleas that the adult Sara ignores but Leonard smirks all the same. No matter how young and innocent Sara Lance is that fire will always be in her eyes.

The rest of the day goes… interestingly.

For a while the two teenagers in the cargo hold don’t seem to have much interest in each other. Leonard, when they first returned with his younger self, took pity on the kid and threw a deck of cards his way. So he sits in a corner playing solitary while mini Sara paces around until she gets bored and takes up residence in the opposite corner. It’s almost unsettling, watching on the security monitor as younger versions of himself and Sara act so distant to one another, but on the other hand it would likely feel more awkward if they were to strike up a friendship.

Leonard is still sitting in his flight chair and watching the security feed while Gideon tries to relocate The Pilgrim, something that has apparently begun to fail now that the bounty hunter undoubtedly knows they’ve been tracking her.

“Should we tell them?” A soft, conflicted voice says from behind him and he turns his head to see Sara standing there, arms crossed as she watches the feed displayed on the monitors.

He sighs as he returns his attention back to the screen, considering her question before he eventually looks back to her.

“Tell them what?”

A small smile crosses her face at that, “Good point,” she says, then comes around and slowly lowers herself onto his lap. He adjusts his position to accommodate her, winding his arms around her middle and pulling her closer as she settles herself.

“They’re going to be too stubborn to let us wipe their minds after this,” she muses and he hums in agreement.

“We could warn them,” He muses, because one of them has to say it, just to get it out there. They both know that they have a chance here to stop all or most of the crap in their lives before it even begins. They don’t have to end up on that ship; don’t have to nearly die so many times. They’ve been given a very unique opportunity to save themselves before everything goes bad.

“I won’t if you won’t.” Sara finally says after a beat, and Len can’t help but to smirk.

“My lips are sealed Assassin.” He promises and then presses a soft kiss to her cheek.

* * *

 

Things get a little more interesting in the cargo hold after a failure to keep tabs on The Pilgrim almost ends in her succeeding with killing Raymond. After that close call they can’t take any chances, and Rip decides that the only logical thing to do now is to take the members of the team who haven’t been prayed upon yet from the timeline as early as possible, on the days they were born.

Half the team is out rescuing baby Jax; they’ve already gotten Stein and Mick. Leonard and Sara have stayed behind to keep watch over their guests.

Which is where things have gotten interesting.

In order to avoid accidently creating a paradox the kidnapped babies are being kept with the two teenagers who have little to no idea as to what is going on. Giving them one baby prompted them to finally start talking to each other, even if it was in the form of arguing.

“Will you please shut that thing up!?” Len had watched as the younger version of Sara had begged her version of him to quiet infant Mick, whom he was awkwardly bouncing.

“Do you want to try?!” The kid had retorted, to which Len had smirked.

The addition of baby Stein hadn’t made things much better, or quieter for that matter. The only thing close to improvement is that now each of them had a separate baby to worry about and so they weren’t yelling at each other so much. Bringing in little Jax should’ve plunged the cargo hold into chaos, as evidenced by the look of disbelief on young Sara’s face when The Professor handed him to her despite her already holding the infant version of himself.

So, while the team argues over what to do now that they have all their past selves (minus Raymond’s, but he’s safe in a 2014 Star City hospital) Leonard keeps watching the security feed of the cargo hold.

Things in there seem to have, somehow, calmed down.

Mini him and Sara have switched burdens by now, and they seem to have established some sort of system. Kendra had Gideon replicate some baby supplies for them, so what he’s looking at right now is his younger self sitting on the ground and feeding baby Jax a bottle while little Stein lays on a blanket next to his leg, meanwhile young Sara is taking care of baby Mick’s diaper nearby. They appear to be talking civilly now, he’s turned off the sound since the team is having a meeting behind him but he can still see the teens are talking to each other with either neutral or smiling faces, and soon his younger self says something while putting down Jax’s bottle and mini Sara hands him a cloth.

He’s felt a presence beside him for a few minutes at this point, but only when Sara clears her throat does he finally look up at her. She’s still staring ahead at the screen, a small smile on her face.

“It’s kind of nice,” she muses, finally looking to him with a bright smile that he hasn’t seen since the early days on The Amazo, so carefree and proud, he’s missed that smile. “To see how we would’ve been if we met before all the darkness.”

He looks back to the screen at that, to their younger selves carefully switching babies. They don’t know what they’re doing, but they’re figuring it out together, and they clearly trust each other.

“Yeah,” He agrees, a small smile pulling at the corner of his lips, “It really is.”

* * *

 

Apparently Rip’s mother runs a temporal orphanage of sorts, so they stash their younger selves there for the time being. When they get back on the ship, however, they have a message waiting for them. Apparently The Pilgrim isn’t one to take defeat lying down so she hunted down their loved ones to use as bargaining chips. Getting them back isn’t easy, but they manage, so now instead of having their own younger selves on the ship each team member has someone they love who they have to explain all this time travel to.

For Sara, that’s the 2005 version of her father.

They’re alone on the bridge, awkwardly staring at both each other and anything but. A part of Sara wishes The Pilgrim had gone to 2016 to steal her father from the timeline, at least that way she could explain this. But this Quentin’s daughter is only seventeen, and while he can’t be blind to how much of a wild child she is, traveling through time is taking it to a whole other level. Not to mention the reason for her recruitment, the path that led her here, how is she supposed to explain any of that?

“A spaceship?” Her father finally breaks their silence, “A time traveling space ship? What’s next? Martians?”

She laughs at that, digging the pill Rip had given her from her pocket, maybe it’ll be best if she just doesn’t explain.

“And here I thought you would be more weirded out by being rescued from a time traveling assassin by your twenty-nine year old daughter.”

He shakes his head, “Don’t even remind me,” he asks of her, “I’m still having trouble accepting you’re, my you, is a teenager. I don’t even want to think about you being almost thirty.”

She laughs at that, and it makes him smile.

“I’m proud of you honey,” he tells her, “I always knew you’d be helping people.” With that he gives her a hug, and she feels her smile brighten.

He doesn’t put up any fight about taking the amnesia pill and ends up being their first stop to drop off. Followed by Ray’s ex-fiancé and Jax’s father, both of which are painful because they all know what’s coming for those two. They’re still waiting for Ray and Jax to return to the ship when Sara hears a knock on the entryway of her open door, and she turns to see Leonard leaning there.

“How’d things go with your dad?” He asks and she shrugs, unsure of what to make of this unexpected, but certainly not unwelcome, visit.

“Fine, said he was more freaked out by seeing me grown up than by the time traveling assassin.”

“You didn’t mention you are a time traveling assassin?” He asks with a raised brow and she smirks.

“He doesn’t need to know everything,” Leonard chuckles, amusement evident in his eyes, so she continues. “How’s Lisa?”

This time her words cause him to deflate, yet when she stands rigid in concern he rolls his eyes, letting her know there isn’t anything to worry about.

“She’s fine. She uh… she wants to meet you.”

Ah, that explains his anxiety.

“The Pilgrim took her from the present, so she knows all about The Amazo and everything. You don’t have to meet her, if you don’t want to, I just thought I’d let you know.”

She thinks about it for a few seconds, considering her options and how new their relationship, if it can even be called that at this point, is. But really, there’s only one thing to consider.

“ _I_ would love to meet her,” she answers, “But are you ok with that?” She’s stepped well into his space by this point, so he doesn’t have to reach far to take ahold of her hand, running his thumb over her knuckles as he meets her eyes and closes the distance in a short, soft kiss.

“Of course I’m ok with it,” he murmurs as they part, and she smiles back at him, and then follows him down the hall.

The blissful feeling of their kiss only stays in her system for about fifteen seconds before the dread starts to set in, increasing with every step she takes towards Leonard’s door. She knows how important Lisa is to him, and the fact that this meeting has apparently been the other woman’s idea shows that he must have talked about her in the six years he thought she was dead.

They make it to his door almost too quickly, and he opens it with only a little nervous hesitation.

The first thing that strikes Sara about Lisa is how much she looks like Leonard. She has the same angular jaw, the same steely eyes, and the dark curly hair of his younger self. In contradiction, she looks very unsure of herself, an expression Sara has never seen on Leonard, and is standing with her arms folded.

“Sara this is my sister, Lisa.” Leonard introduces, moving past her and into the room so that he can give his sister a nudge. “Lisa, this is Sara.”

Lisa still looks like she doesn’t know what to do with herself, maybe she hadn’t actually thought they would get this far.

“Hi,” Sara says, giving an awkward little wave to Lisa. “Leonard’s told me a lot abo-”

She doesn’t get further than that before she’s enveloped in a crushing hug. At first she doesn’t react, only looks to Leonard over Lisa’s shoulder, and he appears just as surprised as she is.

She only starts to get over her shock and pull back just as Lisa pulls away, a small smile on her face and water in her eyes.

“Sorry,” she says, taking a step back and wiping at her eyes a little. “Just… thank you for taking care of Lenny. On the prison ship and here and… just thanks, and I’m really glad you’re alive.”

Sara laughs at that, “Me too, and no problem. Someone has to look after him.” She remarks and she sees Leonard rolling his eyes, but he’s smiling and so is Lisa.

* * *

 

Sara hugs Lisa one more time before she has to go, as does Leonard, and when they walk back onto the ship with their arms wrapped across each other’s backs, well Sara feels better than she has in a long time.

They approach the control table while the others are still filing in, Leonard taking his seat while Sara remains standing for a moment, waiting for Gideon’s cue to strap in, when Stein approaches her.

“I’m surprised you didn’t advise your younger self against getting on a certain boat,” he says and she can feel Leonard’s eyes on her from behind, for such a brilliant man Martin can certainly be clueless at times.

“I thought about it,” she says, an evil grin on her face. “But she’s going find something on that boat that’ll make it worth it.” She glances back to Leonard, and she can’t be sure if Stein really makes the connection, but it doesn’t matter. Leonard is smiling back at her, and that’s all she needs.

Of course Rip pops the bubble of her good mood by breaking the news that time is beginning to set with their younger selves removed from the timeline, and so they no longer have time to try and hunt Savage in the past. They have to go for him in the only time they know for sure they can find him.

2166.

Everyone exchanges nervous glances with each other, the air in the room suddenly heavy. This is their last chance. For better or for worse, whichever way this goes, they’re in the endgame now.

Sara meets Leonard’s eyes, his gaze serious and determined, and she nods. They’ve faced monsters before, and this time they have each other to lean on.

This is going to be the most dangerous fight they’ve ever taken on, but they’ve come too far to back down now.

“Let’s go,” she doesn’t even realize that she’s the first to speak until the others all turn their attention to her, and then look to Rip in agreement, and he nods gravely.

“We will survive this.” He promises them, but it’s obvious he doesn’t believe his own words, and Sara doubts if anyone else does.

She doesn’t.

But she tells herself not to think about that, and that he’s right. They’ve made it too far to not survive this. She looks to Leonard as she gets in her seat, his eyes meeting hers to let her know he’s thinking the exact same thing. They’ve been through too much to lose each other here, in the end, and his eyes hold a silent request that she be careful.

She nods, just enough for him to see, and he returns the gesture.

They aren’t going to let the universe tear them apart again.


	14. Corrupt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains references to Chapter 4, when Sara and Leonard were talking while playing war in his room. If you are confused at any time, that conversation might clear things up!

Nobody ever expected that challenging Savage at the height of his power was going to be easy, but what they got was just ridiculous. Not only did he have a giant robot on his side, which nearly destroyed the Waverider, but he also had their dead teammate Carter on his side as a brainwashed henchman. Because of this Kendra, when she actually had a chance to kill Savage, couldn’t bring herself to do it and so now they have the immortal psycho locked up in the brig with Carter chained in a cargo hold.

So here they are, gathered on the bridge and arguing about whether they should kill Savage and leave Carter brainwashed, or if they should try and persuade their captive into telling them how to undo his hypnosis.

While the team squabbles about it Leonard glances down to where Sara is sitting against the side of his chair. She’s been a little more sympathetic to Kendra’s pleas of keeping Savage alive in order to save Carter than he has, but she also hasn’t shown any real opposition to killing him.

He does feel bad for Kendra, don’t get him wrong, but Savage is too much of a risk to keep alive. The brig isn’t going to hold him forever, not to mention that the only way he’s going to relinquish the spell he has over Carter will have to be through brutal torture, and they only have one crew member with the skills necessary to even stand a chance at getting the likes of him to talk.

He knows she’s aware of this too, but like him, she doesn’t want it to get that far.

“Sorry we’re late,” Raymond interrupts the rest of the team’s bickering as he and Jax come marching in, him holding a tablet. “But we found something.”

“Something” turns out to be an understatement.

What they found is that Savage’s robot was from beyond 2166, way beyond, meaning that their immortal headache somehow got his hands on future technology and that is a huge no-no in the eyes of the Time Masters.

 Due to the extensive damage the robot cause to the ship they’re taking the long way, driving through the temporal zone like it’s a highway, to get to this place called The Vanishing Point at the end of the timeline and hand Savage in to the Time Masters with proof that he’s a time criminal and thus they will at last agree to undo everything he has done.

It’s all a little too convenient in Leonard’s opinion.

He can’t explain why, but something about this just doesn’t sit right with him. It’s all too easy, Ray and Jax coming across this bit of information that, in theory, should take the bounty off their heads and still rid the timeline of Savage’s destruction. Nothing is ever easy for this team, but until he’s sure what it is about this that’s bothering him Leonard is going to keep his mouth closed.

Of course, Sara knows him better than that.

“What do you think?” She asks as the team meeting breaks and they all head off to their own devices.

He takes a moment to think, trying to put into words exactly how he’s feeling about this whole situation.

“Did I ever tell you about Alexa?” He asks, though it’s only a formality to get her memory on the right track, he knows he told her.

She nods, biting her lip as she remembers the long ago conversation about the safe deposit job that would’ve ended horribly if his gut instinct hadn’t told him to get out.

“Sorta feels like we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop?”

She’s asked it as a question, but it isn’t one he needs to answer. Instead he hums in agreement.

“What do you think will happen when it does?” She suddenly asks and it’s all Leonard can do to keep his breath from hitching in his throat.

_“What do you think will happen to us once Ivo gets his super serum?”_

He has to see her face now, and her gaze confirms that she knows exactly what conversation her new question has sent his mind reeling back to. Keeping Savage on board is huge gamble, and with so much at stake… they’re going to need to keep an eye on their captain.

“Stay close.” He answers her, fully aware that his eyes as well as his voice are near begging, but he doesn’t care.

She nods, her face stern and serious. There’s another conversation playing back through his mind, one they had much more recently in Russia. He’s sure she’s thinking of it too, wondering if they’re at the point yet where they need to enact that plan.

Or, if maybe they can still salvage this mission.

 

* * *

 

It helps to know that Leonard is seeing them too, those flashes of Ivo in Rip. Sara doesn’t want to admit it’s there, but she isn’t naive. It isn’t his decision to keep Savage alive and in the brig that has her worried, at first he was only doing that for Kendra’s sake. It’s the news that Savage may be a time criminal, the smirk on Rip’s face as he took a swig from the bottle Mick stole from his stash, and now it’s the rattling of the ship as they make their way down the path of the timeline.

Still, she doesn’t want to believe that Rip is as morally lost as Ivo.

Almost an hour after the meeting she wanders into the office to, hopefully, put her suspicions to rest.

“Not to sound like a six-year-old, but are we there yet?” She asks, a cheeky grin on her face when Rip looks up at her from his charts for only a fraction of a second to acknowledge her.

“No, The Waverider was severely damaged in Savage’s last attack.” The Captain informs her, regret and frustration equally evident in his voice.

“Yeah,” She agrees, and as though to prove the point the ship rattles. “I can tell by the way she’s flying.” She turns around when Rip doesn’t say anything, though she suspects that he has caught the judgment in her tone, even if he is still staring at his papers. “Are you sure you’re not pushing her too hard?”

“The longer Savage is on board the ship, the greater the danger to all of us.” He answers and Sara can admit he isn’t wrong there, but she can also see that danger has nothing to do with him pushing The Waverider past her limits.

“To us or your family?”

He doesn’t even look up.

“I checked with Gideon,” she informs him. “Bringing Savage on board didn’t change the timeline. Your family still dies.”

“The timeline is always in flux,” Rip insists with a shake of his head and a wave of his hand, his eyes still set on his charts. “Once we get to The Vanishing Point all will be well.”

He seems so sure of this, so convinced, and yet so desperate to convince himself. It’s a dangerous headspace, one that she knows all too well.

“You know, you aren’t the first captain I’ve served under.” That gets him to look up, at last. “Before I was in The League I was a guard on a prison ship, helping a scientist who was looking for this miracle medicine.”

“You are not seriously comparing me to Anthony Ivo, are you?” Rip asks, voice incredulous. It doesn’t come as a surprise that he knows whom she is referring to, even if Ivo wasn’t technically the captain of The Amazo. Rip’s read her file, he knows who was really in charge of that ship.

So she nods. “Anthony Ivo was a good man at heart.” She tells him; even if the words leave a sick taste on her tongue she can’t deny their truth. “He was after the mirakuru so he could save his wife, she was sick. He was willing to do anything to save her, no matter the cost.”

Rip opens his mouth, likely to insist that he is nothing like Ivo, when any chances of saying anything are cut off by the ship suddenly plummeting into a barrel roll, knocking them both to the floor.

Sara grabs on to the foot of the table as sparks fly out from various places on the ceiling and walls, ducking her face into her arms so that she isn’t burned. Once the ship settles she pulls herself up to her feet and follows Rip onto the bridge, where he is already demanding an explanation from Gideon.

“Time drive failure Captain,” The AI replies in what Sara notes to be a very “I told you so” toned voice.

“What happened?” Jax’s voice calls as both he and Martin come hurrying through the doorway.

“The time drive is offline,” Rip all but grumbles, tapping his fingers on the screen of the control table, which is currently displaying a schematic of the ship’s engine room. At first he’s thoughtful, but then his eyes widen ever so slightly and the way in which he’s tapping his finger shifts from frustrated to anxious.

He has an idea.

“Uh… Miss Lance, would you mind going and checking on our guest?”

He’s too calm.

The ship just came one step away from crashing through time, while they’re so close to ridding the world of Savage for good. Especially after the conversation they just had he should have snapped that order at her, his patience should be gone.

But he has an idea, and he doesn’t want her knowing.

So, Sara doesn’t give herself time to question him. Instead she complies with his request and hurries out of the room.

She will check on Savage, she just has one pit stop to make first.

“Sara!”

Ah, perfect.

She whirls around to see Leonard rushing towards her, his eyes taking a second to scan her for any injuries and she does the same. Once she’s determined that he’s fine she hurries down the hallway to meet him.

“What happened to the ship, are you ok?”

“I’m fine,” She swears, “But Rip’s slipping. I’m going to check on Savage, I need you to do me a favor and check on Jax and Martin. The time drive went offline; they were on the bridge with Rip when I left. Everything should be fine, but-”

“Just in case,” he finishes for her, an understanding in his eyes. Neither of them knows what it is exactly that they’re worried about, but they need to stay on alert, and protect those on their team who won’t think to be.

“Thank you,” she breathes and he nods.

“Of course, just be careful.”

“You too.”

With that said she gives him a quick peck of a kiss before they spilt off in their separate directions, and she prays that she’s only asked him for a fool’s errand.

 

* * *

 

She hasn’t.

Soon as Sara headed off for the brig Len asked Gideon for Stein and the kid’s locations and the computer happily told him that Stein is on the bridge while Jax is heading for the engine room to fix the time drive. That second bit made him nervous, even if he knows perfectly well that Jax is a more than qualified mechanic. So he went and asked Mick about it, after all his best friend did apparently spend the equivalent to lifetimes captaining a time ship of his own. So now he’s here, pacing around Mick’s room with one finger tapped to his ear as he waits for Jax to respond on the comms.

“I’m a little busy right now Snart,” the kid answers and Len breathes an actual sigh of relief.

“Get out of there, that room is white hot with temporal energy.” He snaps an order at the kid, but of course the team’s comm link is an open channel, meaning everyone can hear him.

And that does mean everyone.

“Mr. Snart please, Mr. Jackson is going to have plenty of time to-”

“Wrong, Englishman!” Mick barks, springing to his feet in anger. “Fixing a time drive is dangerous when the ship’s off, but when it’s on?! You’re gonna kill the kid!”

“Um… What?” Jax asks on his end and Len can actually hear Rip running his hands over his face in frustration.

“Don’t pay any attention to them,” he tells Jax.

“Right,” Len drawls, “Mick only spent lifetimes flying a time ship as Chronos, usually staying three steps ahead of us. Go on and ignore him.”

“I’m not normally one to side with Mr. Snart and Mr. Rory,” Stein chimes in to the debate, “But if the radiation levels are indeed that high, and Mr. Snart does make a valid case about Mr. Rory…”

“Gideon,” Mick calls while Stein babbles on, “How much temporal radiation is in the engine room?”

“Currently, levels are at 3% above maximum.” Gideon answers, also turning on the screen in Mick’s wall to show them the camera feed from the engine room split screened with the readings for the radiation. Len sees Mick’s eyebrows shoot up, something that doesn’t help the nerves coursing through his system.

“Get out of there now Jax,” he drawls urgently, his eyes now glued to the monitor. Jax is still kneeling in front of the open compartment of the time drive but he isn’t fixing anything, just kneeling there and likely trying to decide whom he can trust.

Which is exactly what has Leonard so nervous, because Jax doesn’t have a long history of trusting him.

“Mr. Jackson please,” Rip’s frustrated voice sounds out, “If you work quickly you should still make it out without experiencing any adverse effects.”

“Should?” Leonard all but snarls, wishing he could just grab the kid out of there and then punch Hunter in the face, or at the very least slap some sense into him.

“That things gonna blow,” Mick rumbles in a low, awe filled voice, and Len whirls his head to see that his partner is looking at the radiation readings in awe, and yet also terror.

“Jax!” Mick barks into his comm, “The radiations building in the time drive, it’s gonna blow.”

“Jax,” Len finds himself saying sharply, “You’re gonna want to listen to Mick.”

“Mr. Jackson please-”

“Thing’s gonna go off.”

“Jefferson!”

Len can’t listen as the three bicker back and forth, all he can do is watch the screen where Jax is looking around as though the men shouting over the link are actually in the room with him, pulling him in all different directions, until he finally drops his tools and gets to his feet with his hands held up in a position of surrender.

“I’m sorry Rip,” he says and then he runs, closing the door to the room behind him, and not a moment to soon.

Just as he makes it out the door the ship rocks lightly with the force of a small explosion, Leonard watching in horror as a wave of orange energy passes through the engine room.

He feels relief, but his heart is still heavy in his chest, and while Rip starts yelling he reaches up to his comm and switches over to a more… secure, channel.

“Sara?” He asks, his voice breathless as the realization hits that Rip is past the point of slipping; he’s cracked, and with everything else that hasn’t gone according to plan they’re all in danger. “Did you hear any of that?”

“Yeah,” She answers, “Is Jax…?”

“Out,” he promises and he can hear her sigh with relief on the other end. “Savage?”

“Secure,” she reports, and now it’s his turn to breathe in relief, even if it can’t last.

For a minute he doesn’t think Sara is going to say anything else, until she does, low and guilty.

“Meet you in your room?”

He sighs, and closes his eyes, because he knows exactly what it is she wants to talk about.

“Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

By the time she arrives at the barracks Leonard is already waiting for her outside his door. A part of her almost wants to run to him, to throw her arms around him and just confirm that he is still here and alive. Even if Jax was the one in danger, it just as easily could’ve been him. Savage’s presence on the ship has given Rip a dangerous taste of victory and clouded his vision, which means none of them are safe.

Neither of them says anything as they enter his room and the door slides closed behind them. Sara leans herself against the edge of his bed while he half sits down on the surface of the desk.

She can’t speak for him, but for her the conversation they’d had back in Russia right after half the team was captured is playing on an endless loop in her mind.

They’d discussed a contingency plan, but she had hoped Rip would never go far enough to push them to use it.

Deep down, Sara can’t deny that she knew from the start that he would.

“What are the chances the others will actually want to come with us?” Leonard asks, breaking her from her thoughts.

Well, mostly.

She looks over at him with a tired expression, one hand held out to let him know she is going to speak; she just has to find the right words first.

“Let’s just… let’s just hang on for a second, before we maroon Rip in the temporal zone with Savage.”

His eyes narrow with either surprise or offence, possibly both, and it takes all her self-control to keep from rolling hers.

“You want to stay?” He doesn’t sound like he can believe what he’s hearing; which, after today, after every bad call Rip has made, she can understand.

“When we talked about things going south we didn’t exactly plan on the time drive being down and Savage being on board.” She reminds him and a flicker of understanding goes through his eyes.

When they had originally talked about grabbing the others and ditching their Captain in the event of him driving them past the point of no return they hadn’t been under the impression that it would mean leaving him for dead and trapped with an immortal psychopath.

Still, at this point, that might not end up being deal breaker.

“Ok,” he concedes, though it’s clear he is still weary. “So what do you propose?”

That’s when she sighs and looks away, leaning her weight more heavily into the mattress of his bed, not even wanting to think what she is.

She doesn’t want to go through with what she’s about to suggest, and she knows he’s going to feel exactly the same about it. But they have a mission, a future to save, and she isn’t ready to abandon it.

“We came here to kill him,” she states her voice dark and regretful, apology already in her eyes when she looks up and sees that Leonard has already come to stand beside her, concern written all over his features.

“Correct,” he admits with a cautious drawl, making it obvious that he doesn’t like where this is going. “But thanks to some ancient magic Kendra is the only one who can do that, and she’s made her stance on the matter pretty clear. Savage doesn’t die unless he untwists Carter’s mind.”

“I was brought on for a lot more than my ability to kill.” She reminds him, this time her voice is low and quick. At first she doesn’t think he’s understood, that she hasn’t been clear enough, but then she sees his eyes dilate with recognition.

“No.” He tells her firmly, though not quite an order, he knows he could never order her to do, or not do, anything.

“Leonard-”

“No.” He repeats, “You are not torturing him.”

“It might be our only play-”

“Savage has been a part of every war in history, your bag of tricks might not even work on him!”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she says with a roll of her eyes, though Len still looks at her as though she’s insane.

“Sorry,” he bites out, “But the last time I checked you came on this mission to be a better person, a hero, and torture? Not very heroic.”

She’s about to protest, to tell him that heroes do whatever needs to be done or some other sort of lie such as that, when the ship lurches.

She nearly topples into him, hands grabbing onto him to keep herself upright while he grabs her with one hand and grabs onto the side of his bed with the other. For a second they stand there, holding each other and keeping their feet planted solidly on the ground, waiting for something else to happen.


	15. Me and You

They stand there for what feels like an eternity, holding to each other longer than necessary, until they’re absolutely sure the ship isn’t about to fall out of the time stream or anything like that. Once it’s become clear that nothing else is going to happen Sara meets Leonard’s gaze and sees the mix of fear and determination in his eyes.

“Gideon?” She asks, pulling barely an inch away from Leonard and glancing up at the ceiling. “What was that?”  
“It appears that Mr. Rory has contacted the Time Council and relayed to them our location. They have attached a cable to the hull of the ship and-” with a faint beep the computer’s voice dies, and Sara looks back to Leonard, his fears matching hers.

“We need to find somewhere to hide.” He tells her, a hard steel overtaking his eyes and she nods.

He moves past her to the door and presses his ear against it before apparently deciding that it’s safe and so he opens the door. He pokes his head out and checks both ends of the hall, and then he turns back to her.

“Stay behind me?” He asks, and suddenly the fear in his eyes is for a lot more than their current situation.

She doesn’t need his protection like she did the first time he said those words to her, back when they were an order and not a question. So much has changed since then, and yet, there’s so much that hasn’t. After all this time, all these years, they’re still looking out for each other, and he is still the last person she wants to lose; especially after she has already lost him so many times, and she knows that he feels the same way.

She nods and grabs her staff off it’s resting place on her wall as she follows him out. They creep their way down the hall, her following his lead and keeping her eyes peeled behind them for any adversaries. They don’t see any, but they hear plenty. The loud footfalls of heavy boots that are too militarized in pattern to belong to anybody on the team echo off the walls all around them, severely limiting their options for a path. Somehow they make it to the bridge, and even more miraculously it’s clear of any Time Masters or their henchmen.

“Ok, now what?” She asks, but Len is already two steps ahead of her and in Rip’s office. This, understandably, confuses her but she follows him regardless, crouching down next to him where he’s feeling around the floor.

“What-?” That’s all she gets out before the floor tile he’s fiddling with pops up, and she looks at him.

He is completely serious.

They can hear the uniformed footsteps getting closer, they don’t have much of a choice here, and so she sits herself down on the edge of the hole he has uncovered and lowers herself in with the aid of the metallic rungs built into the side.

Whatever this little hidey-hole was built for, it was clearly not built for two grown adults.

Leonard can barely make it down the latter, even with her pushing herself as tightly to the back wall as she can manage. He looks down at her, as though weighing his options, and he resolves to remain on the latter.

It isn’t long before they feel the ship lurch again, sending them both forward when they really have no room to move. This surge of movement is far more powerful than the last one, almost like they’re time jumping, and then they’re slammed back as quickly as they were forward. Sara grunts as the back of her head slams against the wall while the front collides with the heel of Leonard’s boot.

“Are you ok?” Len grits through what must be the effort to keep his grip on the latter.

“Yeah,” she says, sucking in a breath through her teeth as she lets the pain of the double impact pass through her.

The ship has stopped now, and they hear the sounds of boots right overhead, so they remain quiet, not daring to do so much as breathe. They hear muffled voices, too, though it’s hard to make out what they’re saying. Some of the voices are familiar, some aren’t, and it isn’t long before they’re all gone.

Sara looks up at Leonard in the darkness, even if she can’t really see his eyes, each of them still holding their breath. They stay like that for another few minutes that feel like an eternity, until finally Len stretches up and pushes the trap door of their little hiding space open no more than a crack.

As the light floods into the hole she can see his form retreating out the top, a silent cue that they’re in the clear.

“How did you even know that was down there?” She asks as she crawls out, noting that he’s still looking around suspiciously even as he holds the panel open for her.

“Please,” he drawls, “After all this time you have to know that I make it my business to know every inch of my surroundings, especially if I’m going to be there awhile.”

She snorts; of course he inspected this ship from top to bottom, probably asked Gideon for the blue prints on their first night.

“Right,” she agrees, then begins pacing the bridge, “So where are we?”

Actually, she could probably take a guess.

Outside the front windows of the ship she can see more vessels just like The Waverider, all sitting idle. They’re in some kind of hanger or something, and suddenly she remembers how Gideon had been telling them that The Time Masters had attached a cable to the hull of the ship before she went mute, meaning that they must have been towed to The Vanishing Point.

But where is everybody?

“Looks like The Time Masters weren’t as understanding as Rip thought they might be.” Len observes, also pacing around and taking in the emptiness of the ship.

Sara nods, mentally replaying the sounds of the boots and the voices marching over them, The Time Masters taking the team.

“So,” she asks, turning to look up at him. “What’s the plan?”

She isn’t expecting him to sigh, or for his eyes to flit to the ground before back up at her, but that is exactly what happens.

“We go.”

He says it so lowly she almost thinks she’s heard him wrong, yet she knows that she hasn’t.

“What?” She asks when he walks by her, sauntering towards the pilot’s seat. She turns to him with a look of total disbelief, and maybe she should count it as a win that he actually stops and looks at her, but it doesn’t feel like much of a victory. “What about the team?”

“We’re in over our heads Sara,” he tries to reason with her, “There’s nothing more we can do for them.”

“You’re just gonna leave Mick?” She asks, not believing for a second that he would really do that again.

“If the Time Masters are half as twisted as Mick’s said there is an excellent chance Mick is no longer Mick.” He deadpans for her, “Now lets get out of here before they decide to come back for us.”

With that he turns for the pilot’s seat again, and so this time to stop him Sara reaches forward and grabs onto his arm, halting him in his tracks.

He looks back to her, an expression on his face that others might mistake for anger at touching him, but she knows him better than that.

He’s terrified.

She lets her grip slide down to his hand, encasing his fingers with her own and fiddling with the silver ring on his pinky, the one she knows he keeps to remind himself how easily things can go wrong, before finally meeting his gaze.

“We can’t leave them behind.” Her voice is firm, steady, and leaving no room for the argument she can clearly see he still wants to make.

But he sighs, because he knows he can’t talk her out of this, even though such knowledge isn’t going to stop him from futilely trying.

“We don’t exactly have the best luck with things like this,” he reminds her, “What happened last time…” He trails off, but she knows what he’s referring to. The sub, The Amazo sinking, they’re being separated for six years.

She can’t live through that again.

“It won’t happen this time,” she assures him, tightening her grip on the hand she is holding while her other hand moves up to cup his jaw, and she leans up on her toes to press a soft, loving kiss to his lips.

“I promise.”

When she pulls away he looks like he still wants to say something, maybe to tell her that she has made a promise like this before, and it took her six years to fulfill it. She wants to do more to assure him that everything will be ok, that they will all walk out of this together and alive, but if she’s being honest, she wouldn’t believe that if he were saying it to her.

She doesn’t get the chance to say anything, however, because the old fashion phone in Rip’s office starts ringing.

 

* * *

 

It’s Gideon on the phone, and she has a plan. It isn’t a good plan in Leonard’s eyes, but then again he supposes that at this point nothing would be. He has had enough plans go south in his life, been in enough shitty predicaments, to know that sometimes it’s best to quit while you’re ahead.

Right now he thinks they’re as ahead as they’re going to get, but Sara doesn’t want to quit, so he doesn’t have a choice.

Gideon sends them out to sabotage the other time ships in the hanger with these little devices that, if stuck to the right place on the ships’ outsides, will prevent them from taking off; as well as cause the AI’s to serenade their Captains with some lovely renditions of _Love Will Keep Us Together._

While they’re off sabotaging the ships Gideon gives their time drive a reboot, and so by the time they return the drive is almost ready, they just have to wait a few more minutes.

A few more minutes to think about all the ways this could go wrong.

“Could you stop doing that?” Sara asks of him, interrupting his thoughts.

The two of them are sitting on opposite sides of the office doorway, him a little more slouched than her and tapping his pinky against the metallic floor of the ship while he thinks, well, he was anyway.

The look Sara is fixing him with is one of sympathy, “We’re gonna be fine.” She tells him, not that he is exactly inclined to believe her.

“Suppose we do save them, then what?” He asks of her, “Clearly the Time Masters aren’t as agreeable over this whole Savage is a time criminal thing as Rip thought they would be.”

She nods, considering his words.

“Then,” she says, “We cross that bridge when we get to it.”

He fixes her with an unimpressed glare, to which she laughs. She knows he doesn’t like plans like that, ones that rely solely on figuring it out later. Sure, there is no plan that ever goes accordingly from beginning to end, but he likes to at least have an outline of what he _wants_ to do. He knows that nine out of ten plans he makes he is going to have to improvise on, but he would still like to not rely solely on that prospect.

“The time drive is now back online,” Gideon chimes in before he can voice any of this, which is probably for the best, and so the two of them push to their feet and Sara, having spent more time around Hunter than he has, goes for the pilot’s seat.

“Strap in,” she calls, and he smirks. He keeps his eyes on her as she lowers the pilot’s restraints over herself and he sees the flicker of danger, but also of confidence, in her eyes.

He would follow her over Hunter any day.

 

* * *

 

The plan goes… actually it goes better than Sara honestly expected it to. Their little stunt in the hanger does what it’s supposed to and keeps the armada of other ships from pursuing them in their time jump to right outside the prison chamber. Having the Time Masters outgunned makes rescuing the team easy enough, and turns out the Time Master’s weren’t able to get Mick on their side for a second time, so he’s still with them. The only problems that arise are that the guards apparently took Kendra away during the imprisonment and nobody knows where to, and the revelation that the Time Masters have been controlling, or at least had the option to control, every event and every person throughout all of history, including each one of them.

So, Savage is going to have to wait, they have a new mission now: destroying The Oculus.

She’s still processing all of this, her mind reeling with the details of it. Rip made it clear that the Time Master aren’t always controlling things, but they could be, and they will never have any way of knowing which actions throughout their lives have been their own and which were the Time Masters doing.

“Does your head hurt as much as mine does?” Leonard’s drawling voice pulls her from her thoughts, and she turns her head to the side to see him leaning in her doorway, a deck of cards in his hand.

She sits up, as she’s been lying on her bed thinking all this through, and she shrugs while he enters.

“Little bit,” she asks, “So, what do we think of Rip’s plan?” She’s trying to come off as teasing, but if the unimpressed look Leonard’s giving her is accurate then it’s falling flat.

“I don’t see us having much of a choice,” he sighs, leaning down against the edge of her bed and shuffling the cards he’s brought with him. “Less we want to spend the rest of our lives wondering which actions are our own and which were because of them.”

“I don’t know,” she says, “I still feel responsible for everything I’ve done, and it still keeps me up at night.”

He’s moved on now, from shuffling his cards to fiddling with that ring on his pinky finger, his eyes meeting hers as he listens to what she’s said.

“It’s the things I didn’t do that keep me up at night,” he tells her, to which she raises an eyebrow.

“And what’s that?”

He doesn’t answer her right away, not that she expected he would. With conversations like this one he likes to take his time, to take a few seconds and gather his words in his head before they come out of his mouth.

“Well…” He drawls, “For starters, I didn’t stop you from getting off that sub.”

“I think we both know that you couldn’t have, and I would’ve resented you if you had.” She reminds him and he nods.

“I never said it’s a regret,” he points out, “We both know there can be things that happen we don’t regret, but we still wish it didn’t have to go down the way it did.”

His eyes meet hers with his words, and she nods. After The Amazo, both tours with The League, and the pit, she can understand what he means.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this Oculus thing,” he continues, still fiddling with his ring; a true sign of his anxiety, Sara thinks. “So, if something happens in there, because with us something always does, I want to make sure I give you this first.”

Sara’s heart stops.

He’s slipped that little ring off his finger and is holding it out to her.

At first all she can do is blink, and while the face he’s portraying to her is patient she can’t imagine that he isn’t holding his breath. Finally, as the surprise passes through her and a little bit of confusion settles in, she manages to raise an eyebrow and tear her eyes from the ring to his gaze, now able to see just how expectantly he’s watching her, for one answer or the other.

“Are you asking me to marry you Leonard?” She manages to ask, and it somehow puts her at ease when he shrugs, even though that should not be a comforting sign.

“I won’t be offended if you say no,” he assures her, “I know we haven’t officially been together for more than a few weeks, and assuming we do survive today I’m not asking you to go down to a courthouse with me tomorrow. Just if something happens-”

“We want to have each other,” she finishes for him. “No regrets, nothing left unsaid, no matter what.”

He nods, and then he has to curl the ring back into his fist to keep from dropping it because with a happy grin overtaking her face Sara leans forward and frames his face with her hands, her lips planting a soft kiss onto his.

“Yes,” she whispers as the kiss breaks, and his face lights up with a grin far more pure than she has ever seen before on him, and it only causes her own smile to grow. He kisses her one more time, fumbling for her left hand while he’s at it, and once he finds it they break apart just long enough for him to slip the ring onto her finger. It’s too big for her pinky, but just right for her ring finger, which only adds to her joy.

“I’ll get you a real one after the mission,” he promises her between kisses but she shakes her head.

“No,” she refuses, “I want this one, it’s perfect.”

This is definitely the happiest she has ever seen him, as well as the happiest she thinks she has ever been.

He presses another kiss to her lips, this one more heated than their last few, and she winds her arms around his neck as he pulls her closer to him, nearly into his lap-

“Sorry to interrupt,” Gideon’s voice calls out from the ceiling, her voice a bucket of cold water on the moment. “But we have arrived at The Oculus Wellspring.

They stay where they are for a moment, Sara leaning back just enough to look at Leonard.

“Let’s go save the world.”


	16. Destiny

_“Are you asking me to marry you Leonard?”_

It had been a long shot and he knew it, so he was pleasantly surprised when she said yes. He isn’t in any rush to cement their still new relationship in a marriage, and doubts that she is either, but they could figure all that out later. Right now they had a world to save, she even said as much.

_“Let’s go save the world.”_

He wants to scoff as her words echo through his mind, save the world indeed. Nothing can ever just work out ideally for them, can it?

“Get him out of here!” He shouts over his shoulder, looking to her against his better judgment.

There’s a failsafe, a switch that needs to be held down for The Oculus to blow. He’s just knocked Mick unconscious, the maniac was trying to sacrifice himself. But he won’t leave Mick to die at the hands of the Time Masters again. The rest of the team is already back on the ship, Time Masters are shooting at them from every direction, there isn’t time to come up with some other option.

“No,” Sara refuses, a hint of tears in her voice, as well as her eyes when he meets them.

He can’t say that he isn’t guilty of the same.

“Just do it.” He orders, almost sneers at her. There won’t be any cheating death this time, he can feel it, and much as he hates to leave her on the lingered promise of their future he can’t leave Mick to make this sacrifice.

Sara knows him well enough that he doesn’t need to tell her this, and though he is still fully aware of all the blaster fire around them it fades into the background when she approaches the stand of the wellspring, not stopping until she is no more than an inch away from his face; her eyes shining with tears.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs and then, before he can stop her or even ask her what she’s doing, she drops to the ground.

“What-?” He doesn’t get to finish, not before he hears the faint _click_ and his balance turns very unstable.

“Sara what are you doing?” He demands as she slides his false leg off and out from under his jeans, forcing him to grab onto the rim of the wellspring for support. “Sara!”

She ignores him, silently and hurriedly moving for Mick’s gun. When she turns the gun up to it’s highest setting and starts torching his leg he thinks she’s lost her mind, and he keeps screaming for her to run and take Mick with her, though he knows she wouldn’t listen even if his voice weren’t drowned out by the sound of the flame.

With the gun up so high it doesn’t take long before she’s separated his curved metal strip of a foot from the rest of the leg, and his eyes widen as he finally realizes what she’s doing.

“Sara!” He calls out when she hisses in pain after attempting to pick up the now burning metal. “Sara stop! Just go!”

She continues to ignore him, of course, and with her thin leather gloves serving as the only barrier between her skin and the metal he has no choice but to release the failsafe as she succeeds in moving the metal from the floor to the wellspring.

“Are you insane!?” He demands furiously, mustering every ounce of self-control he possesses to keep from grabbing her hands.

“I’m not leaving you!” She shouts; eyes filled with tears that they both know are only partly from the pain in her hands. Adrenalin is the only thing fueling her actions now, keeping her moving and working. She jams the weakened metal of his foot down hard over the failsafe until it’s holding down the switch, her determined gaze making it abundantly clear that she is beyond the point of reasoning.

With that done she reclaims her hands pulls out her staff, yanking it apart and holding one half out to him.

He doesn’t need to process it, to ask why she is giving this to him. He just grabs it and tugs up the leg of his jeans until the small pin on the sock at his knees is revealed, and then he forces the hollow end of the staff on.

It isn’t a perfect solution, but it also isn’t his first improvised leg, and it will get him to the ship.

 

* * *

 

They barely make it out with their lives, but they do make it out, all three of them, and that is all Sara could ever ask for.

She’s sitting in the med bay chair now, her hands healing from the burns that came with picking up the smoldering remains of Leonard’s prosthetic foot.

Speaking of Leonard, he’s in here too, alive and well and being helped into the other chair by Rip.

“Alright,” the Captain huffs once Leonard is settled, hands on his hips as he takes stock of the situation. “Gideon can regenerate your leg for you if you would like, or since I know you had some earlier concerns regarding your ability to walk, she can fabricate you a new prosthetic if you would prefer.”

Leonard looks over at her, as though for an opinion, so she shrugs. She doesn’t care if his leg is made out of metal, fiberglass, flesh and bone, or anything else. All that matters to her is that he’s still here.

“I’ll take a prosthetic, but no more metal on the cup.” He says, to which Sara can’t help but snort in amusement, remembering the engine room and how the metal at the rim of his leg had sped up his frostbite progression until he removed it.

Rip appears surprised, like he honestly expected the resident crook to have Gideon regenerate his leg, but he doesn’t comment on it. Instead he simply asks their AI to get started on a new prosthetic and then he leaves the two of them to be alone.

At first it’s quiet, they don’t even make eye contact, which is borderline ridiculous considering they just nearly lost each other _again._

“How are your hands?” Leonard finally breaks the silence; looking at her with a mix of concern and amusement that she can’t help but laugh at because it’s blatantly obvious he’s trying hard to not be angry with her for saving his life.

“They’ll be ok,” she says, inspecting her already healing skin. “So, another near death for the books.”

“Hm, better be our last.” He comments, his gaze serious, “This one was way too close.”

She smirks, “Well I think they’ve all been way too close,” she says and at least he nods in agreement to that. “But I wasn’t leaving there without you.”

“Funny,” he muses, an almost nostalgic look on his face. “If it weren’t one of our other near death experiences you might not have had a choice.”

She nods to that, a bittersweet feeling settling into her chest as the reality sets in that he’s right and if it weren’t for the gangrene nearly killing him all those years ago he wouldn’t have survived today.

He doesn’t need to tell her that’s the reason he’s asked for a new prosthetic as opposed to a regeneration, for now anyway.

“Sorry if I’m breaking up a moment,” Mick’s voice suddenly rumbles from the doorway, gaining their attention. “But when you two are back in one piece Hunter wants everyone on the bridge.”

 

* * *

 

He wants them there for a time jump.

He doesn’t say anything when they arrive other than to strap in, and so when they land Leonard looks out the windows to see that they have touched down in a decidedly familiar place.

“What are we doing back here?” Raymond asks as Rip leads them all off the ship and into the vacant lot they blasted off from at the start of the mission.

“Savage has a time ship, courtesy of the Time Masters.” Rip begrudgingly explains, “The timeline is unclear due to our destruction of The Oculus-”

“Meaning Savage is lost to history.” Stein interrupts, a note of disappointment in his voice.

Rip presses his mouth into a firm line at that, because he of all people doesn’t need to be told what that means.

“Which is why I’ve brought you all home.” He announces, looking around at them as though he’s expecting an argument, which he is of course going to get.

“Mission’s not over man,” Jax says firmly, not leaving much room for a discussion.

Raymond, of course, then speaks up in support of their youngest teammate’s statement, citing that they’ve had difficulty in locating Savage before and that this time won’t be any different. Of course Rip does have the argument that since they’ve destroyed the most reliable way of tracking the timeline finding Savage now will be next to impossible. This doesn’t matter to any of them, and Leonard makes sure to point out that Savage still has Kendra and Carter and they aren’t about to leave two of their own in the clutches of that madman, but it isn’t holding with Rip. He just says that there isn’t anything they can do for Kendra and Carter now so he is off to the refuge to pick up their younger selves and return them to their proper places in the timeline, that way it can be as if they never left.

“Do you really think we can just return to our old lives, pretending like none of this ever happened?” Sara demands in response to his suggestion, her voice an incredulous scoff, and finally their Captain has the decency to look just the tiniest bit guilty.

Maybe they’re getting somewhere after all.

“That might be a tad difficult,” he says, “You see, I had to bring you back to May 2016, not January 2016.”

Len sighs soon as he hears the admission, dropping his head and almost disappointed that he isn’t the slightest bit surprised, just when he thought Hunter was done lying to them.

And then, of course, to top it all off, he isn’t even here.

Mick tries to poke him, and that’s how they realize they’ve been arguing with a hologram for the past few minutes, while the real Rip is inside the Waverider and taking off as they speak. Leaving them all behind.

Unbelievable.

They stare off at the sky for a moment, watch the space where the ship has flown off, and then one by one they turn and file out of the lot.

“So,” Len drawls in Sara’s ear as they leave, the two of them second to last to go, with only Mick lingering behind them. “What now?”

Sara almost stops walking at his question, and he figures it must be that the realization is suddenly dawning on her that Rip’s decision to throw in the towel has inadvertently put them in a place neither of them has ever truly believed they would live to see.

They’re in Star City, her home, and they’re together.

They’re both in one piece, more or less; there is no mad scientist, evil dictator, or anything else of the like chasing after them. They’re in the normal world, with no deadly threat looming over their heads, and they can do normal things.

Plus, to top it off, they’re engaged.

“Well,” she eventually says, still kind of looing like a deer caught in the headlight and he suddenly feels like maybe he’s been a little too presumptuous, that maybe she doesn’t want to introduce him to her world just yet.

Given the strange set of circumstances in which they found each other, given his own history, he can’t say he would blame her.

“My entire family is probably going to freak out when I bring home a guy I first met on a prison ship, and then later on a time machine, and tell them that even though they’ve never met him I’m engaged to him.”

He hums at that, holding his breath because he’s a little afraid she’ll say that for these reasons she doesn’t want to bring him home. After all the complications in her life, all the lies he knows she’s been forced to tell, including that of her very survival, he would hate to be another item on the list.

“So,” she eventually breathes out, an excited smile beginning to creep it’s way onto her face that gives him hope. “Why don’t we start with Ollie?”

 

* * *

 

The idea of bringing Leonard home to her family feels so unreal. As they walk through the city Sara can hardly believe that she’s here with him, and a part of her mind is transported back to Lian Yu when she was negotiating with Ivo, and later Slade, for Leonard’s freedom.

It had seemed like a fantasy back then, a perfect dream that would never come true. It’s still far from perfect, the knowledge that Kendra and Carter are still in danger looming over the mood like a storm cloud. Deep down she knows, is fairly certain they all know, that the mission isn’t really over. Sooner or later someone will think of a way to get Rip back here, but until then they’re on a shore leave, and considering she almost lost Leonard again not even two hours ago she intends to make the most of it.

No matter how many times her father is going to threaten to lock her, or possibly even Leonard, in a holding cell at the station.

“Here we are,” She announces when they arrive at the building under which the arrow cave is located.

At first Len doesn’t look as though he believes her, raising a dubious eyebrow at her until she giggles and drags him forward.

The inside is about as impressive as the outside, which isn’t much. It’s a city building that Ollie had used as a headquarters for his mayoral campaign, but since his election the place has become abandoned.

To the average observer anyway.

Sara leads them over to the elevator and presses the “down” button, a giddy smile that she just can’t seem to wipe off on her face the entire time.

“You have got to be kidding me,” Len says, eyeing her as though he believes she has lost her mind.

She only snickers, “You didn’t think it was cliché in 2046,” she reminds him.

“I didn’t know it was his campaign building in 2046.” He says; his face still dumbfounded even as they step into the elevator, his hand interlocking with hers.

The trip down is too quick and too slow all at once. When the doors finally do open Sara can’t deny that her heart drops a little when her ears aren’t greeted by any noise.

There is no Felicity and Oliver arguing, no “cur-clunk” sound of the salmon ladder being used, no ecstatic clicking of keys on a keyboard. Nothing. Nobody is here.

Until she realizes that someone is.

“Dad.” She breathes upon seeing him, the smile that is already on her face growing as she releases her grip on Leonard’s hand so that she can run and embrace her father.

“Baby,” her dad says as though he’s in a daze, looking completely stunned to see her and holding tight when she wraps her arms around him.

“When’d you get back?” He asks, his voice every bit as stunned as his face, and she wonders if maybe he’s looking at Leonard over her shoulder.

“Just now” she assures him, pulling out of the embrace. “We just got back.”

He’s still looking at her like he’s seen a ghost, which she figures is due to Leonard still standing behind her at the base of Felicity’s computer platform.

“Dad-”

“There’s something I need to tell you baby.” He suddenly interrupts her, and while her smile does falter a little bit it remains where it is, bright on her face, because she doesn’t know what else to do in the face of that exclamation.

“Ok,” she says, but even still he doesn’t say anything, in fact he looks around the room frantically for a few seconds, as though hoping the words he needs will appear out of thin air. “Dad?” She asks, still smiling like somehow her having good news to share with him will make it so whatever he’s trying to tell her isn’t so bad. “Is everything ok?”

That’s when he looks her dead in the eyes, his face stoic and his eyes watery.

“No baby, it’s not.”

Finally her smile falters.

“You’re starting to scare me,” she warns him, and she does hear Leonard drawing closer, but she can’t bring herself to turn around and acknowledge him. Right now her stomach is doing flips, anxiety eating away at her as she waits for whatever her father is about to say.

She runs through the scenarios in her mind, trying to guess what this thing he has to tell her could possibly be.

She never could’ve guessed correctly.

He doesn’t actually say the words, she doubts he could even bring himself to if he wanted, but he doesn’t have to.

It all happens in a blur. He starts telling her about Damian Darhk and his escape from prison, and then he gets choked up when talking about Laurel and she feels the tears in her own eyes.

“No,” she practically begs, her voice a sob. “Dad no.”

“I’m sorry baby.” He says, reaching out for her but she steps back, and thus stumbles right into Leonard.

With no other way out she let’s her knees buckle, crumpling in on herself against Leonard as his arms wind their way tightly around her waist and hold her suspended where she’s fallen. She sobs like that for only a few seconds before she straightens her feet to the floor, feeling that she should at least try and stand. Leonard helps her, his body flush against her back as she stands and then she turns, burying her face in his chest and curling her fist tightly in his shirt. She feels his strong hands on her back, feels his lips on her hair as he tries to take away some of her pain.

He can’t, of course, but he’s going to try, and she loves him for it.

 

* * *

 

Rip Hunter is going to die.

That is what Leonard has decided.

When they all gathered back in the vacant lot after less than twenty-four hours back in the present it didn’t take long for the nerd twins to signal Hunter. Once back on the ship they were there for approximately five seconds before Sara slugged Rip across the face and pressed a knife to his throat.

That conversation lasted almost as long as the peacefully boarding of the ship did before Rip knocked Sara unconscious with his little future gadget; and now they’re here.

Running his finger along her jawline after laying her on her bed Leonard turns to go, and of course Hunter is waiting for him in the hall. He does his best to remain calm; smashing Hunter against a wall isn’t going to solve anything, not yet anyway. He scans for the door to close behind him, and soon as that’s done he rounds on Hunter.

“Give me one good reason as to why I shouldn’t freeze you right now.” He snarls, pure fury coursing through his veins as he steps into the other man’s space.

“Now Mr. Snart,” The ever-incompetent captain stutters, “I can explain-”

Len cuts him off by pulling his gun from its holster and switching it on.

“Start talking.” He sneers, and Rip gulps, now backed against the wall with absolutely nowhere to run.

“You see,” he manages to get out. “If I were to bring Miss Lance back to the night on which her sister was killed… it would only result in her own death.”

He stops there, as though expecting some sort of suddenly understanding reaction, but Len just hold his gaze.

“In the original version of the timeline,” the Brit continues, “It wasn’t only Laurel Lance who died in Damian Darhk’s prison escape, but Sara and her father as well.”

Again, the silence and look as though he expects this to excuse his actions.

After all the lies he’s told, Hunter can’t seriously expect him to be this stupid.

“We have a time machine and a team full of super powered-”

“I thought of that,” Rip cuts him off, “But before the destruction of The Oculus I had Gideon show me the potential timeline for if we were to take the Waverider back; it doesn’t matter. The Lance family still dies.”

This time Leonard does take a moment to absorb the words, to truly consider their reality.

Then, he grabs Hunter by the collar of his shirt and pins him even more forcefully against the wall.

“For all you know that could’ve been the Time Masters’ puppet show.” He snarls and, despite his harsh grip, Rip manages a nod.

“Perhaps,” he agrees, “But without The Oculus there is only one way in which we can know for sure.”

“Glad we’re on the same page.” Len snarls, and Rip looks curiously at him.

“You’re willing to risk Sara’s life?”

For that, Len throws the “Captain” to the floor, snarling as he stands over him.

“No,” is all he says, all he needs to say, and so while their pathetic excuse for a leader picks himself up he turns and heads back into Sara’s room to wait for her to wake up.

* * *

 

When her eyes blink open they feel heavy, and at first Sara can’t remember why, but then she feels the moisture and it all comes flooding back to her.

“Easy Sara,” Leonard’s soft voice is purring before she can even start to properly freak out, his hand brushing soothing strokes up and down her arm. “Easy.”

She chokes on a sob while she sits up, obediently following Leonard’s guiding hand into his embrace. She wraps her arms around him, gripping tight as he rubs circles on her back even as the sobs cause her shoulders to shudder violently.

“Shh, don’t work yourself up there.” He whispers when her sobs start to grow particularly powerful. “We’re going to go get her back.”

She chokes, forcing herself back so that she can look up at him.

“But,” she stutters, wiping the tears away from her eyes so she can see. “Rip-”

“Made a mistake,” he interrupts her, the hand that he doesn’t have settled firmly on her back moving up to smooth out her mussed up hair. “We have to finish the mission first, just in case Darhk turns out to be a problem for us, but we are going back for Laurel.” He promises her, his gaze every bit as serious as she has ever seen it.

She’s still crying as he presses a kiss to her forehead, but less now, because she trusts him more than anyone else in the world. If he says they’re going to save Laurel then they are going to save Laurel.

* * *

 

Things are going south.

In hindsight, maybe she should have gotten involved in Oliver and Dig’s recent fight over whose side Andy is really on. To be perfectly honest she’s been struggling with determining his loyalties herself, but John has been so adamant about trusting him and while she’s considered the possibility that his head could be clouded… she’s lost a sister before, and brought back a feral killer, but things still worked out in the end. So she put her faith on the gamble that it would work the same way for John.

A gamble that has put the entire team at the mercy of Darhk’s powers.

“Ms. Lance,” He says, snapping her mind from her thoughts, the sadistic look of glee in his eyes sending her heart plummeting. “Nine months ago, I made your daddy a promise. I told him what I would do if he betrayed me.”

She hears Ollie growl, sees the Arrow fly and Darhk catch it mid air, but she can’t break free of his control enough to so much as look.

The sorcerer holds his furious gaze onto Ollie for a few seconds, but then it’s back on her. She makes sure to keep her face neutral, blank, to not give him the satisfaction of seeing how afraid she is. Even so, she can’t fight the tears glassing over her eyes. He’s going to kill her, and worse he’s going to do it purely for the fun of it. He’s going to do it for his own sick joy and for the torment of her father, something that even in his crazy plan is needless at this point.

“Now where was I?” He asks; arrow still clutched in his fist as he stalks closer to her. “Oh yeah, I want you to give your father a message, from me. I want you to tell him-”

She’s prepared for it, everything has been made so clear that there is no way she couldn’t be, but even so the gasp still catches in her throat.


	17. We Could Be

“Now where was I?” He asks; arrow still clutched in his fist as he stalks closer to her. “Oh yeah, I want you to give your father a message, from me. I want you to tell him-”

She’s prepared for it, everything has been made so clear that there is no way she couldn’t be, but even so the gasp still catches in her throat.

* * *

 

**_Seven Hours Earlier_ **

_Laurel enters her apartment with a huff, all but throwing her purse onto the sofa as she shuts the door behind her. Ollie can’t make anything easy, can he? She has been wrestling with this decision for the past two days, trying to figure out if taking a DA job under the leadership of Eleanor Darhk is really a good idea or not. Then she thought she finally had it figured out, she would turn down the job in order to keep her schedule what it is and allow her to continue her nighttime activities as Black Canary. So she went to tell Ollie this and he responded by reminding her of how she has been dreaming of the DA position her entire life, and how the only reason she even became Black Canary in the first place was so she could channel her anger over Sara’s death. He reminded her that Sara isn’t dead anymore, that she has done great work as Black Canary but things are changing and maybe having her in the DA’s position is a new opportunity for her to be a hero._

_In short, he made some really good points._

_So she’s reconsidering it again as she flops herself onto the couch, though she is barely there for a few seconds before a knock sounds out from her door._

_“Ugh…” She groans, swinging her legs over the edge of the couch and getting to her feet. She trudges over to the door and swings it open, assuming it’s either Oliver, her dad, or somebody else from the team. But, instead, she barely has a second to process who it is before the hard weight of their body is crashing against her and all she can see is a mess of blonde hair._

_She catches the incoming weight a little roughly, her hands wrapping around her visitor’s back in an embrace as she attempts to process... whatever this is._

_“Sara,” she breathes, smoothing her younger sister’s hair and feeling how tightly she is gripping to her._

_Something’s wrong._

_Gently she pushes herself back, bringing Sara out to arms length and taking in her appearance. She’s smiling, and while that should be a comforting sign it only unsettles her more, because there are a few tears running down her face._

_“What’s wrong?” She asks, and Sara laughs a little while wiping the tears away._

_“Nothing,” She answers, sniffling away the last of her apparent distress. “Not yet. It’s a long story, I just got back from the mission and I need you to come with me to the Waverider.”_

_Laurel just blinks at her at first, unsure of how else to respond to this._

_“What?” She finally asks, “What’s, what exactly is the Waverider?”_

_“It’s the name of the ship I’ve been on,” she answers quickly, “I’ll explain everything on the way, come on let’s go.”_

* * *

 

_Part of the reason Leonard is pacing back and forth on the bridge is nerves; the other part is he needs something to do to keep from strangling Hunter._

_He still can’t believe their “captain” was so willing to just let Laurel die, and then not even have the decency to warn Sara about it. If it had been Lisa... He doesn’t even want to think about that._

_Fortunately he doesn’t have to, as the sound of fast approaching footsteps grabs his attention. Sara is rounding the corner through the doorway and onto the bridge, her rescued sister trailing behind her. Leonard has never actually seen Laurel Lance before, not even in pictures. She’s taller than Sara, her skin more tan and blonde hair more curled and wavy. Physically they don’t look all that much alike, but there’s something in the way that Laurel walks, the way she carries herself, not quite the same as Sara but enough that anyone could see the two are sisters._

_“Laurel,” Sara says to her sister as they enter. “This is the team.”_

_Laurel looks shell-shocked; meaning Sara probably used their trip here to explain what is happening._

_“Hi,” she manages, her gaze flitting from one person to the next. She settles on Raymond, and that makes sense, as he’s the only person here other than her sister whom she has actually met._

_Still, he doesn’t miss the way her brow furrows with distaste upon noticing himself and Mick, if ever so briefly. He tries to keep from taking offence, he doesn’t have the best legal record and given her career she has probably seen the worst aspects of it._

_This whole meet the family thing is going to be an uphill battle._

_“So,” she breathes out, her hands settling onto her waist. “Sara tells me I’m going to die tonight.”_

_“You were,” Sara quickly amends, “You were going to die tonight, but we’re going to stop it.” She pauses and looks at all of them, more specifically at Hunter sitting on the steps to his office and pouting like a baby, and then to the rest of them. “Right guys?”_

_They all nod, one by one, and Laurel lets out a shaky exhale._

_“Ok,” she agrees, “So what’s the plan?”_

* * *

 

She is prepared for the blinding light of Ray’s re-growing as he jumps out from where he’s been hiding in her pocket, but they played the plan so close she was starting to worry Darhk’s magic might have paralyzed him as well.

She can finally force that gasp out of her throat when she hears the crash of Darhk’s body against the back wall, when she sees the light of Ray’s photon blaster dissipating. Before Darhk can even try and figure out what’s just happened Snart has him frozen in place and Sara appears from around the corner to flash him with a futuristic blaster to knock him out, though she hardly needs it after her fist slugging across his face almost completes the job for her.

All Laurel can do at first is stare, even though she knew all of this was going to happen it still doesn’t feel real. Darhk came so close to killing her, and knowing that the Legends are the only reason he didn’t, that they had to come back in time in order to stop it from happening, it’s all a little mindboggling. She can almost see it in her head, where they might be now if the plan hadn’t worked, like a bad dream.

“Thank you,” she manages to say, her eyes still on the three Legends as a whole, but specifically on Snart.

* * *

 

_She isn’t sure about this plan._

_Granted, with her life on the line, she would probably be feeling that way about any plan, but this one seems to be exceptionally risky. Rip Hunter is insistent that if they’re going to do this they need to try and keep the timeline as close to the original as they can. This means she can’t tell anyone on Team Arrow, not even Oliver, about how wrong things are going to go. In fact, Rip won’t even let his team tell her most of it, just that at some point Darhk is going to overpower her and there won’t be anything her team can do to stop him. All she knows is she’s going in with Ray in her pocket so that he can grow back to his normal size just before Darhk kills her. He’ll hit him with his photon blaster. After that Snart will come out from around a nearby corner and freeze Darhk’s hands and feet to the floor, and while the sorcerer is focused on him Sara will come around and knock him out._

_In theory it isn’t a bad plan, but they’re only going to have one, exceptionally close, shot. If even one of the three Legends coming along makes even the slightest mistake that’ll be it, game over for her._

_And, of those three Legends, there’s going to be a convicted felon in the mix._

_“Ok, you ready to go back?” Sara asks her, pulling her from her head. Their team meeting has disbanded, though there are some people still left milling around the bridge, including Snart._

_“Yeah,” she answers nervously, but instead of moving to leave she lowers her voice._

_“Um, I know they’re your team and everything. But are you sure we can trust Snart?”_

_She knows immediately that it’s a bad question, because Sara’s face falls to that frown of disbelief, the one where she grits her teeth and closes her eyes before answering._

_“Right,” she says, mostly to herself. “It’s a long story, but for right now you have to get back. Look, I trust Leonard with my life, and he’s the one who convinced Rip to let us come back and save you. You can trust him.”_

* * *

It is a long story, one Sara explains as they’re all heading back to the bunker. At first Laurel isn’t sure how to react to it. At first it hurts, because a part of her feels like she should have known Sara first met Leonard Snart while she was on The Amazo. It reminds her of how tough things were between the two of them when Sara first came back, so bad that her sister apparently didn’t tell her about someone who did so much for her. But then she pushes that thought away, reminds herself that they aren’t in that place anymore. Besides, Sara is a lot like Oliver in the way that neither of them really enjoys talking about the years in which they were dead to the world.

So she looks past it, focusing on how happy Leonard has made her sister and how much he’s changed from the man she read about in a countless number of arrest records. It does throw her for a bit of a loop when Sara finishes her tale by quietly murmuring that she and Leonard are engaged, following the statement by subtly showing off the ring on her finger. It doesn’t look like any engagement ring Laurel has ever seen before, but the smile on Sara’s face is all the confirmation she needs.

“That’s great!” She quietly exclaims, pulling her sister into a sideways hug as they walk. She catches Dig glancing over his shoulder at them, Leonard as well, but she ignores them.

“Thanks,” Sara chuckles, hugging her back. “But you can’t tell dad.” She instructs, “He hasn’t even met Len yet, so I want to try and break the news to him myself.”

Just picturing that conversation is enough to make Laurel chuckle, aware that even under the best of circumstances it can only end so well.

“Don’t worry,” she promises, “My lips are sealed.”

 

* * *

 

Rip is waiting when the three of them return to the ship, leaning against the holo-table and biting anxiously on his nails. Sara feels the euphoria she’s been high on for the past hour dissipate upon seeing him, anger replacing it as she is suddenly reminded that he almost didn’t let them come back.

“Where is everybody?” Ray asks; helmet held under one arm and thus leaving his clearly worried features visible for everyone to see.

“Well the mission is over, and you three were the only ones needed for the plan to save Miss Lance, so everyone else went home.”

“Just like that?” Ray asks, hurt clear on his face. “Without even saying goodbye?”

It is a little unexpected, after everything they’ve been through together Sara can’t say that she would honestly expect the whole team to just pack up and go while the three of them were out. She looks to Leonard, needing to confirm that he shares her suspicion and it isn’t just her feelings towards Rip over what happened with Laurel.

He looks every bit as uneasy as her, maybe even more so.

“Well,” Rip finally begins to answer Ray’s question, “I’m not exactly sure.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Leonard asks, “You lost the team?”

“No,” Rip quickly objects, “The mission that you all signed on for has come to an end, Savage is defeated, but consequently so are the Time Masters.”

“Why are you saying that like it’s a bad thing?” Len asks, sounding somehow even more suspicious than before.

“The Time Masters, no matter how corrupt, were the guardians of time.” Rip says, not like they didn’t already know that. “With them gone history is more vulnerable than ever, and it needs new protectors.”

Oh.

“I’ve asked the others, and now I am asking you, to take the next three days to think it over.”

 

* * *

 

Three days, Leonard quickly decides, is either too much time or too little when it comes to making a decision like this.

He and Sara keep jumping back and forth with what they want to do, talking over all the options and yet avoiding talking over them as much as they possibly can.

They stay with Laurel that first night, since Rip has taken the Waverider back to The Vanishing Point to take inventory of what’s still functional up there. They don’t sleep much, though not for any particularly fun reasons; Sara suggested it, but he’s trying to stay on Laurel’s good side at least until they break the news of their engagement to her and Sara’s father.

Quentin Lance turns out to be, surprisingly, not so tough to win over. Going in Len had been a little worried about telling a police captain he’d never met, at least not that the man remembers, that he’s engaged to his daughter. But, apparently, all the insanity Sara’s father has witnessed in the past few years has left his mind decidedly open. He just wants his daughter happy, and while he’s definitely a little peeved they got engaged before the first meeting with him the fact is almost forgotten by the end of the afternoon.

They head out to Central City on the second day, where they’re met by a squealing Lisa tackling them both in a hug and demanding Sara put her in the bridal party for the wedding. Len rolls his eyes, half tempted to tell his sister they aren’t even going to have a formal wedding, but that would be a lie. At the very least Sara’s entire family would kill them both, and at the very most he doesn’t want to give up the chance to see Sara walking towards him in a wedding dress.

Anyway, they have two hours left before they’re supposed to meet Hunter, and they’re on their way back to Star City via train, though whether or not they will actually going to that vacant lot is still unclear.

“Ok, let’s just look at the facts.” Sara finally snaps about halfway through the ride, though she remains sideways in her seat and using his shoulder as a pillow. “On one hand the timeline does need protecting.”

“And somebody needs to be around to keep Hunter in check,” he adds to her statement, and she nods.

“It doesn’t have to be us,” she reminds him, and possibly herself as well. “After all this time we finally have each other. There are no more psychopaths after us. Nobody’s dying, or close to dying, or anything like that.” She says, tilting her head up to look at him with those mesmerizing blue eyes of hers.

“We could have a normal life,” he finishes for her, and she nods.

He lets the idea settle in for a moment; it’s something that until this moment has only been a faraway dream. The two of them, no more worrying about cheating death. They could find some semi-normal jobs and get an apartment, maybe plan a real wedding, or go on a honeymoon to a beach that doesn’t include prisoner exchanges. They could set up in Star City to be near Sara’s family and visit Central at least once a month to check in on Lisa, or the other way around, since Sara’s mom lives in Central as well. They could go out to movies or dinner, maybe even break into S.T.A.R. Labs every once in awhile just to keep Barry, Cisco, and Caitlin on their toes. Living like normal people, maybe they could even talk about a family. A little baby that’s a part of them both, with Sara’s smile and his knack for finding trouble; _that_ would keep them on their toes.

Intertwining his fingers with Sara’s she snuggles into him more, that contented smile he loves so much spreading across her face.

Really, when they break it down, the decision isn’t hard at all.

 

* * *

 

“A full compliment!” Rip exclaims in disbelief when the entire team shows up in the lot. “To be honest I had my doubts all of you would be willing to throw in with me for a second go.”

“Well actually,” Carter says, a little gravely in Sara’s opinion.

“We’re not coming with you.” Kendra finishes for her other half, sounding a little guilty but it makes sense.

As the two of them explain, every one of their lives has been spent running from Savage. Now that he’s gone they’re finally free. They can live out a normal life, just the two of them, and all they have to do here is say goodbye.

As they fly away Sara looks up to Len, since he is standing behind her and holding her close with one gentle arm slung just over her chest. He smiles back at her, pressing a quick peck to her lips as though in confirmation of their own decision; letting her know that he stands by it even knowing what the other resident couple chose.

“Anyone else only here for a goodbye?” Rip asks, directing their attention back to him. A few curious gazes land on them, but when neither of them says a thing Rip nods with a smile and begins ushering them all back to the ship.

Sara wraps an arm around Len’s waist as they start following the group. She almost asks if he’s sure he wants to do this, but she bites her tongue because she already knows his answer would be the same as hers.

Normal just isn’t who they are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it! I want to say thank you SO much to everyone who has read this story, and this series from the beginning. All of the wonderful comments i've gotten have been what's kept this story alive! Every comment has been so thoughtful and it makes me feel so good when people tell me specifically what stood out to them. I hadn't originally intended for this story to be more than five or six chapters but, clearly, it took on a life of it's own. Thank you guys again, so much!


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